i've never really tried to explain this to anyone, because i think it sounds strange myself, but i think that maybe it's more universal than i think.
have you ever felt like you wanted to go home when you were already home?
i don't think it's about home. i think it's about the childhood desire to escape whatever is scary or hard or perplexing and retreat, safely, to the arms of your mom, who has the ability to make anything better.
yeah, i'm there.
i'm so tired. like i woke up this morning and i was tired. i feel like i say that a lot, and that's possibly because i'm constantly operating on a sleep deficit of too much, but i feel physically tired. not brain tired, which i normally achieve about 7 pm and have to push past in order to get things done, not life tired, which i usually feel by thursday when i just can't quite push myself too much further but do it anyway. not muscle tired, which i actually love because it brings on good sleep and testifies of positive effort.
no, this is the kind of eye-drooping, slogging-through-mud tired that i feel everywhere. in fact, right now, i feel it even in the leg that is sort of hanging off of the recliner. i have been trying to push myself today to try to get things done--oh, it will be a doozie of a week--but it's tough when all i want to do is lay like vegetables.
the end is in sight. the complete draft is due in a week and a half. i have about three weeks (and two big sets of papers to grade) between me and sweet freedom from my traditional classes. in about a month or so, i will be defended. which means that i will be very close to being done. DONE.
but, right now, i just want to go home.
I felt like this ALL of my last semester in college. Coming back from break was the hardest thing ever it felt like, and every day I woke up thinking, I want to go home. I think I did go home half the weekends in that semester.
ReplyDeleteOf course, then I did go home and what, ten weeks later? moved across the country sooooo shows how decisive I am.
I think about this a lot though, how I want to go home, but at least for me it's to a home that no longer exists. There is no home full of sisters, there is no home of my high school group of friends, there is no home of being able to just sleep in and let my mom cook and not stress, because I'm an adult now and have to do adult things...but I miss that home. I get it in glimpses, now only at Christmas time when we're all together, and that's sad to me. But then I remember all that I have gotten to experience at not home, and it makes it a little less sad. And I also think of how nice it will be to have what feels like home in a new place, eventually with kids who themselves will long to be home, and it's even less sad. It's just the transition sometimes is really difficult. And I think there will always, no matter how old we get, be that longing. Because nobody wants to be an adult all the time. And everyone has that desire to have the responsibility and groan of life shifted, if only for a moment, to someone we know can handle it, and does so gracefully, because we have seen them do it our whole lives.
The end.
There is a spot in my house that I somehow magically fall into every time I go home. I don't know how it happens, but I legitimately take my bags, drop them in the living room and walk into the family room where I curl up in a corner of the couch, flip on the tv and just...veg. It's my "I wanna go home" spot and it happens to be in the same exact location as my bed, when the Family Room was My Room, back in the day.
ReplyDeleteRight now? I'd give anything to be in that corner of the couch. I so feel ya.