I didn’t want to leave my house. In reality, I haven’t wanted to leave my house for the past year and a half. I guess that’s a good thing. Covid restrictions suited me fine. All I needed was my husband and children for company.
Well, them and my computer. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without my online pals, who kept me sane during the lonely days while Jamie was at work and the kids were toiling away with their online schooling.
The literal silence of my home — nothing but the tippy tapping of a keyboard — became my safe place. And, to be fair, I got a lot accomplished. I built my portfolio; I discovered fellow writers who I’ve learned from exponentially. There was physical silence all around me, but I never seemed to notice because the gears in my brain were always turning.
I guess that’s why I never really noticed how bad things had gotten — mental health-wise.
“Lindsay, you need to go home,” Jamie said to me as we sat in our backyard talking about my upcoming trip. “Not just for the kids, but for you. You haven’t seen or talked to your dad in over a year.”
Jamie has always been the sensible one out of the two of us. He thinks of other people’s feelings on a much more regular basis than I do. His empathy bone is more substantial than mine. He has the ability to put himself in other’s shoes.
Me? I do what will make me happy and feel safe and only break those habits when the people in my life call me out on it.
That’s what Jamie was doing now. He was calling me on my shit.
“I know,” I said, feigning regret. “It just stresses me out. I won’t have my stuff. Things are going to be awkward with my dad. The drive there is worrying me. I don’t want to deal with everyone arguing over who gets to see the kids and when.”
Excuses. I’m full of them.
. . .
I’m swinging to and fro in a hammock under a canopy of trees in the countryside. Two dogs are lazing in the shade beside me, and the sounds of the childrens’ yips of glee energize the clean rural air.
My sister-in-law (and luckily enough, life-long friend) sits in the next hammock over, strumming on a guitar while serenading the dogs, children and me.
Ashley is a beautiful singer. I could listen to her play these songs forever. For a split second, I wonder why I was so nervous to come back to this place.
. . .
Five years ago, all I wanted was to get out. I wanted to run away from my hometown the same way I ran away from all the bad boyfriends in my past. The weight of familial responsibility felt too heavy at that time in my life. Upheavals and bad blood between family members began to seep into my everyday existence, and I hated it.
So that’s what we did. We got out. Jamie and I told our families that we were moving for better business opportunities, which was a half-truth. We packed up the kids and moved four hours away to build our sandwich shop business in a city where we didn’t know a single soul. In retrospect, perhaps not the greatest business decision, but the real truth is, I needed freedom.
I needed to leave that place where everyone knew my name and continued to shove me into the roles they thought were best.
I needed a fresh start to learn how to be my own person.
Back then, I didn’t have the confidence to tell anyone in my life No. I’d try to take on the peacekeeper role between family members, even though I am not built for that type of responsibility. I’ve always been a bit selfish. But back when I was young, I was also a textbook people pleaser. These two domineering personality traits are difficult to balance, and I still have trouble with it to this day.
That’s probably why I keep breaking the online Myers-Briggs personality tests I continue to subject myself to.
“Sorry, your results are inconclusive,” the test will tell me. “Try reanswering the questions and make sure to reply truthfully!”
That’s the problem. I’m too truthful, and it confuses the hell out of the AI. I’ve decided never to take another online personality test again and simply call myself a Lindsay. You can’t nail down a Lindsay.
That’s what I’ll tell people.
And you really can’t nail down a Lindsay. Around the same time, I learned that running away has always been a security blanket of sorts for me. When things got weird, awkward, uncomfortably conflicted even in the slightest, I was outta there. Avoidance has always been the easiest option.
. . .
At 16 years old, I left my parent’s nest one morning for school and never lived there again in my life.
I stayed on couches, in houses filled to the rafters with drugs. I lived with bad boyfriends and even a few nights under the stars on park benches when no one was around to take me in. I never went home because I was avoiding that place with every ounce of my being. Not because anything truly terrible happened there. My dad simply didn’t understand me, and since I had inherited his stubbornness, going home was never an option.
Dad and I have always had this strange, strained relationship. When I was 16 and unwilling to learn anything new, this did not bode well for the two of us. He tried too hard to make me into the sort of daughter he wanted, and I pushed back, unwilling to shift.
I held onto the mean remarks flung at me after he’d had one too many beers, and he refused to let go of the humiliation I tainted our family with when choosing to run away from his home.
Over the years, especially after I had my children, we’ve tried to make amends. But because we both are uncomfortable with showing our emotions, there have never been any words spoken about my dreaded teenage years. Instead, I go out to his farm and help him pick rocks from the field. He teaches me how to operate his landscaping equipment — from zippy little skid steers to the humungous front-end loader.
All the while, the distance remains between us. Though, we are trying in the best way we know how, without allowing ourselves to break down the walls we’ve built to keep one another out.
Dad, though, was only one of the reasons I felt nervous about visiting my hometown after so long away.
. . .
The relationships I had made and lost over the 30 years growing up in that tiny tourist town were heavy at best and downright crippling at worst.
I write jokey stories about those rebellion days of promiscuity and bad choices to deflect from the real trauma that burrowed deep into my bones all those years ago. How can we appreciate our life experiences when we’ve been made to feel ashamed of them our entire lives?
We laugh at those insane circumstances and try to find common ground with others. That’s how.
Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
. . .
Today, my real home is wherever my kids and Jamie are. They are my home — the home I never knew I needed in those younger days. They ground me, and their mere presence in my life helps keep my nervous disposition at bay.
However, home is also the place that shaped me into the person I am. My parents, my childhood friends, the sidewalk where a punk boy with a foot tall orange mohawk (who’d years later, become my husband) carved mine and his initials into wet cement — these are the elements of my past that I can no longer run away from.
Home is where we feel safest. I feel safe here, in this hammock under a canopy of poplars listening to my sister-in-law sing and watching our children play with the dogs. At this moment, I feel safe texting my dad and making plans to visit him at the farm in the days to come.
I reflect on these long-ago memories and wonder about all the new ones to come while understanding one simple truth.
There really is no going home. At least, not to the place we once knew.
Things change. People change. The way we move through our relationships with the supporting characters in our lives is in constant motion. Holding on to the trials of the past is not only heavy, but it makes for a boring story in the end. I’ve discovered that learning to appreciate the Once-Upon days that created me while celebrating the stronger and more confident woman I am now is my own personal turning point.
So I haven’t really come home. Sure, I may be in the place where I grew up, but it no longer is where my heart-home is. This place, the ol’ stomping grounds, has become something new and equally important to me.
My hometown allows me to see how much I’ve grown over these past five years. From then to now, it creates this point of comparison, it underscores the newfound qualities I never thought I’d have back when I was 16 or 20 or even 30 years old. Bravery, backbone, being unapologetically myself are the traits I’ve been studiously growing over the last five years.
My hometown is no longer home, but it is the place where my fresh start began. And for that, I will forever hold this spot close to my heart.
—
This post was previously published on Age of Empathy.
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