It seems like everytime I visit my hometown a little bit of teenage angst pulls itself out of its own grave. Things change both so fast and so slow…
March 23rd I arrived with a big, powerful gust of wind at my back. Downtown, tourists scattered from the rain like bugs. It was eerily quiet for a spring break weekend, and that’s how I could tell the storm preceding me was serious.
It’s a tumultuous time, and I don’t visit home often, so maybe that explains what happened next. Then again, maybe not. Safe to say, though, it gave me a dread I’m still mulling over: My longtime neighbor, a barrel-chested guy who’s always washing his car, was chilling on the porch. He threw me a wave when I passed. He’s a nice guy who I’ve known since middle school, but here he was waving me down as if we were strangers. “Nice to meet you, what’s your name?” I told him my name, along with my family, etcetera, and he again said “Nice to meet you.” Do I look that much different, or has time really been passing while I’ve been away these years? No, it couldn’t be that. He looks exactly the same as always!
March 24th I made the trek high into the hills to visit my dad’s little place. Living in a college town for years, I forget how quiet life can be (Not life in the forest, or life away from the cities, but just life). Living day to day soundlessly has been freaking me out. It’s so easy to get hung up on every little thought I have. I’m starting to miss the constant din of cars screaming, popping, and skidding out. And let’s not forget the chatter of neighbors and pedestrians. The loudest ambient noise I can hear right now is wind whistling through the pines. What a perspective shift.
March 25th I was told by my dad, for the thousandth time, in a familiar pattern, that I need to clean my childhood bedroom out. What does he mean? I wondered. There’s nothing messy in there. All my things are very nicely organized, aside from their gathered dust: Old chapter books coded by color, plastic men arranged in a battle diorama, and stuffed animals amassed over twenty years. Yes, everything’s in its right place.
It's so difficult to imagine my room without these items that I hadn’t realized he wanted me to remove them. I still haven’t done it, I don’t really want to do it, and I’m leaving tomorrow (So I probably won’t do it), but it’s a bullet I’ll have to bite eventually. IDK, I’m the kind of person who doesn’t redecorate because I get too attached to things. Even if I spent some of the worst years of my life holed up in this little bedroom high in the hills, I’m too connected to it in a morbid way. Like those people who get their dead dogs taxidermied. Okay, well, not exactly like that.
It feels a little more like this.