homesick
Most people spend their entire lives in the state where they were born. I am not one of those people.
A few years ago, amidst my parents' horribly messy divorce and all of the pain that came with it, I couldn’t wait to leave the northeast. I had a burning desire to get as far away as possible, a desire so intense that I would classify it as a need. And it just so happened that my boyfriend at the time (the same man who now happens to be my husband) dreamed of being out west.
Kismet.
And so we left.
I guess you could say that I was running away, but I would only agree if we could get on the same page.
This was not a jog meant to clear my head — an attempt at avoiding my problems. This was a sprint. This was survival. This was me running for my life, and if I stopped to catch my breath, even if only for a second, the monster would get me, and it would kill me.
Very different, those two types of running. But I ran, nonetheless.
The space, the enormous distance, that I had put between myself and my family was a reprieve. I could finally breathe. It was like someone had begun reeling in the anchor that found itself shanked inside my chest.
I was happier — lighter. I could make my coffee in the mornings without worrying if my mother and father would run into each other. I could read a book without screams serving as the background noise. I could sleep without shaking.
So why did I miss home?
If home was drama and trauma and screaming and fighting, why did I want to go back?
This place, where my life had gone to hell, was beckoning me, and somehow, some way, I still had fond memories of it. Strange, that.
I didn’t understand it; in fact, it even made me a bit angry, if I am being completely honest, as I promised I would be.
I wanted to love being far away. I wanted to love it, across the country. But all the parts that I loved, I loved because they reminded me of home.
I loved the mountains because they were the hills my brother and I sled down when he was 8 — I, 9. For when you are a child, the hills and the mountains are one and the same.
I loved the winding roads because they were the spiral stairs my father built after our back deck caught fire.
I loved the red of the aspens in the fall because they were my mother’s nails as she stroked my hair while I slept.
And I understood it then — homesickness.
I understood why most people spend their entire lives in the same place.
Dorothy had it right when she said there’s no place like home.
How could there be?
How could anywhere in the world compete with the place you saw Christmas lights twinkling and glittering, for the very first time? Where people cheered your name as you made the game winning shot. Where you learned that your mother’s hands could heal. That your father would do anything for you.
Where you had your heart shattered, and pieced back together.
Where you learned what you like, what you don’t, who you are.
Where you had cake for breakfast, chicken cutlets for dinner, and grandma’s cookies for dessert.
It did make me sick. It twisted my stomach and pounded my head. Sweatied my palms and leadened my legs.
Because no matter how far, how fast I ran, even if I didn’t stop to catch my breath at all, I would always want to go home.