Another Time

How can someone be homesick for a home that no longer exists? Do you ever find yourself right smack in the middle of a life that feels all right and yet all wrong at the same time? Feel totally at peace and at home and yet homesick all at once?

On this brisk Sunday I find myself yearning for different stages of my life that I couldn't go back to even if I wanted to. As the weather changes seasons, I always find myself having this involuntary visceral experience where memories flood into my existence. Most times they are the good ones that puff me up with hope for the future. There is something about the change of seasons that always makes me think back on the expectations I have had for each new season. When I think back to HOW optimistic I used to be I find myself wishing I could go back. The strange thing is, I feel like in each of THOSE stages I've always yearned for a time before, a simpler time. Was there ever, really, a simpler time? When we were children even if we were fighting over a toy or doing chores, those were the most intense feelings our little bodies had ever experienced. In middle and high school, those fights and the feelings of angst felt as though they were going to make my body burst. In college when I struggled to make my wholesome self fit in with my new adventurous self, it felt I would never find the perfect combination of my selves.

NOW that I'm finally feeling established within my self, I wish I had the opportunities to go back to those points in my life. To experience life on the play ground, feeling sure of myself and my decisions (especially in wardrobe). To go back to middle/high school knowing that I didn't need to worry about the opinions of certain people because they were never going to play a role in my real life, or that their only role was to teach me I didn't need to care about them. To go through college knowing that people will judge your decisions all through life and the sooner you accept that and don't try to change their minds, the happier and more settled you will feel. In the post college, real world I'm wishing there was a way the me in ten years could teach me how to not feel intimidated. I have all parts of my "self" feeling really solid and yet trying to figure out where I fit in my community is where I'm struggling. How do I learn to not feel like I'm losing this "race" against everyone in their twenties. Who can be happiest first? Who will find the best job? Who will have a dispensable income?

It's funny because I think even if I had those things I wouldn't feel complete without a sense of self and my love for self reflection. At the end of the day my sense of self hasn't produced me a pay check. It's true they say, money isn't everything but it sure would help wouldn't it?