Friday, January 6, 2017

Visiting Ghosts: A Lesson on Coming Home

I have been home for nearly a month--I thought I would be visiting people, but I have been visiting ghosts. I have been reminded of what was, of who I used to be, yet I no longer match the outline of that girl.

When I returned home from a semester in Fort Collins, I assumed (ah! Another assumption!) that my transition would be easy--it would almost feel as though I had never left. I would be greeted by familiarity and the old relationships I had missed so dearly from afar. I thought I could slide into friendships as if nothing changed.

In my visions of coming home, I was laughing over "the good ole' days" with my parents over coffee and scones. I have never once eaten a scone with either parent.

But, as I learn time after time, visions never play out and life is rarely as easy as one imagines. I returned home, only to be reminded that ghosts are hardly romantic. Ghosts are never easy.

I did slide into relationships as though nothing changed, but only now have I realized that such a mindset is dangerous and crippling when everything has changed. Growth in a distant place throws everything off balance back home. I try on my "past self," but I no longer fit the mold of what my friends and family expect of me, how they treat me. The person my relations back home know and hold onto is angry, bitter, depressive. She is resentful, spiteful.

Going home pulls me back into a character I long to reject. I am done with her. Yet she taunts me in every corner of a claustrophobic town.

Back home, my active resistance of this past self I deplore evokes suspicion around me. Who are you really? This is a rhetorical question. They don't want to know who I am, really.

I am not only visiting a place--I am visiting a mindset, a painful reminder of the damage I caused. I am visiting hurt and disdain. I am visiting relationships that no longer make sense. I am visiting ghosts.

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