Take the Things You Like; Love the Things You Took
We're aware, by now, that trips back to Small Town tend to make me nostalgic. Holidays usually offer a reprieve from this, simply because I am busy and have other things on my mind. It's the trips home where there are no grand plans (beyond doing as little as possible and eating cheeseburgers) when I really begin to think, to remember, to wallow.It was almost six months ago when I last had one of those trips home, back in September. That monotony was broken up by a bit of back and forth to Kansas City, but there were plenty of moments to wander through Grandma's house and miss her. There was time to drive along all of those old back roads and to simply remember what was and to think about what might have been. It's a melancholy sort of thing that I was, apparently, content to splash around in.
It always made going home bittersweet. But this time...it wasn't so difficult. I remember the exact way that it felt the day that Iris died. The simultaneous sharpness in my heart with the unimaginable space that was leftover; it was a combination of what was lost and losing what might have been, all smushed together with the thought that I may never have done anything. I may never have told him how I felt, because until I lost him, it was still muddled. His death brought it into incredibly sharp focus, the kind of focus I may - probably - never would have had without it.
I've been living with the empty space for three years. The sharpness only comes at certain moments, but it's still there. In the six months since that last trip home, I've managed to fill some of that space. Not with someone or something else. Wait, there is someone else. There's me. I'm filling the hole in myself with myself, and it feels wonderful. I don't find myself falling into that sadness nearly as often - though it of course still there - and the sharpness is less frequent and somewhat less intense.
I feel better. I'm happier, and I don't feel like I'm so far from figuring out who I am and what I want. In fact, I think I actually know.
Labels: personal growth, Small Town
posted by nicalyse @ 7:55 PM
3 Comments:
My dear, I think you are the badass.
Way to go! I'm proud of you! I wish that I would stop supressing things and start filling spaces with me and trying to fgure out who I am and what I want. And I don't like going home because I feel those what might have been/what things were like. It's not so bad now that I don't live in my apartment or even in the same town, but still... it's difficult.
That's what it's all about, after you lose someone. Finding something to fill the empty space they left in their wake. I agree with you when you say nostalgia is something that is bittersweet. It's like no other feeling, comforting and heart-wrenching all at once. Like coming home, where everything looks the same and smells the same and feels the same, but it's quiet and the rooms are empty. That's a sort of hollowness you never forget or lose entirely, I think.
I wish I was as confident as you seem to be. I'm glad you've been able to find a path that is able to bring you happiness. Maybe I just haven't found mine yet. The sadness is something I can ignore most of the time, but I think the stings are more frequent than they should be. It's been over four years now. And I still feel like I'm sitting in an empty house.
I keep looking though. I keep searching for a way to fill it again. Maybe one day, if I'm lucky, I'll know what I want too. :)
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