the problem with going home

Before I start writing this blog, let me go ahead and apologize that it’s super late. Quite honestly, for the past couple weeks I’ve started writing about this, that, and the other but I would either go distracted or get lost in my own thoughts every single time, but hey, here we are, meeting again, and doing just fine.

So basically, what this blog is about is the problem with going home. In high school, I always hated reading, but loved writing; however, there was one exception to the boycott on reading and that was a book by J.D. Salinger, titled “A Catcher in the Rye.” Now what I’m ~not~ about to do is give you a summary of the book (I’m sorry Mr. Denny, even though you always hated summaries anyways). But, what I am going to do is tell you why it’s important, and here ya go: One of the smaller themes of the book is that Holden (the main character) is afraid to visit places/people from his past because he is terrified that they have changed and are no longer the way that he remembers this. This is conveyed to the reader through the way that Holden will not go into a museum that he once loved as a child because he fears that it will be different and these memories that he had there as a child would no longer be as adored or valuable to him.

“So Carley, this is cool and all but why am I wasting my time reading this?”

Here’s why. I moved away from home 4 days after I graduated high school. For the first time, I stepped into a world that was completely up to me to create by myself and for myself. When I came to Auburn, I left every stereotype, every relationship, and every memory of my past at home. I wasn’t necessarily that person that came to college and immediately burned all of my past bridges because I was “finding myself” or “I’m leaving all the high school stuff at home.” I didn’t leave high school bitterly, but I did leave in hopes of finding something so much bigger for myself. In the beginning, I was dating someone at home and I had no friends in Auburn, so I was going home every single weekend, and happy doing so. When the fall came, the time spent at home lingered and the more I wanted to stay in Auburn skyrocketed. All of a sudden, I was having the time of my life, with the best people I had ever met, and everything was great. As time continued, as it does, I got a dog, a job, and Auburn became almost impossible to leave at times for either being busy or for the fear of missing out.

As I distanced myself, I began building a life I had always dreamed of. I burned practically every bridge from home, focused less on looking in the rear-view and more on looking out the windshield. And that’s when something weird happened.

When I went home, as rare as it was, I slowly started seeing things change around my hometown, and you’d think that they would have been interesting or exciting, but that just wasn’t how they affected me. The town that I grew up in and remembered all of a sudden wasn’t what I remembered. The places that I used to frequent were closed, different, and for whatever reason, some of this was devastating. These places were changing, and so was my life. There was no way to fight it, stop it, or even be okay with it at the time.

One area where I really saw this change of heart happen was my relationships with people. I found myself distancing myself from people that had once meant the world to me. The best explanation I have for this is the fact that I wanted to remember them with the happy and wonderful memories we had made in the past. I didn’t want to see their new lives, with their new friends and hobbies. I wanted to remember things exactly how I experienced them, nothing less, nothing more. Recently, I was given the opportunity to eat with someone who I considered a close friend in high school, but hadn’t talked to in years. Oddly enough, rather than being excited about regaining a friendship or rebuilding a bridge that I once adored, I found myself absolutely terrified, and when I really began to do some soul searching about why I was this way, I realized it was completely because I was scared that I would be disappointed if they were different that I remembered.

I’m honestly not sure how to convey these emotions to you, other than solely hoping you also have experienced the same, but the point of this blog is how I’m overcoming this fear of mine.

I’m starting to learn that without change, comes no progress. Without leaving our pasts, there are no futures. I’m slowly learning to embrace change, instead of trying to understand it. It hasn’t always been easy, and there’s definitely some change that I’ve fought harder than I ever thought I was capable of, but it’s inevitable. I am learning to roll with the punches, move with the waves, and accept that when doors close, it is promised that a new, and more suitable one will always open. If we spend our whole lives being scared of change, we will be so severely behind on embracing the people that we are supposed to become. I am not the same person that I was a year ago, 6 months ago, or even yesterday. I may be built of pieces from every single moment of the past 19 years, but those moments do not define me. Some of the most painful changes are the exact reason that I have become the person I am today. It’s so important to realize that it’s so okay to adore our memories of the past, because they keep us rooted, but to also appreciate all of the new things, because they in turn make us the people that we are destined to be.

-CR