I remember standing on the floor of my old room when it was not yet a room. When it was plywood and empty framing and open sky. There were no other houses yet around, just empty streets and lots for sale. That was a magic time.
I was in high school when this house was built. And I recognize now more than then just how lucky we were to have the resources to build a house like this, in a brand new, "safe" neighborhood. But I also see now how lucky we were to have parents who took my brother and stepsisters and me along to look at houses, who involved us in the process, who took our input seriously, who gave us some agency in shaping this new house, who used those resources to give each of us a space of our own.
When I moved to New City for graduate school five years ago, I did not want to live torn between spaces, between homes. But this is part of venturing out and exploring and creating new spaces and new homes, right?
I feel pulled toward (old) home more and more lately. I miss my brother and my mom. Maybe even my stepdad and stepsisters. I spent three weeks there over the summer, and it has never been harder to leave than it was when I had to say goodbye to my brother again just one week after he lost his best friend. I know there is not much I can do for him there, but it is hard not to be in physical space with them right now.
It is not just that. I feel the urge to pick up and leave. To romanticize home state skies, and to forget that all those rooms have roofs on them now.
I have been picking at my cuticles, not breathing well, and I have been spending time thinking about once kindred spirits with whom I know I can only ever have relationships that are destructive. Willing them to think of me, willing the universe to put us in each others' paths again. I just don't know how to stop feeling sad sometimes about all the loss that is inevitable, all the paths not taken or closed, everything necessary to creating spaces for new experiences, new skies, new joys.
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