Monday, November 11, 2013

Home is Such a Long Time Away

“...the dark ancestral cave, the womb from which mankind emerged into the light, forever pulls one back - but...you can't go home again...you can't go...back home to the escapes of Time and Memory. You Can't Go Home Again” ― Thomas Wolfe

Have you ever longed to go home? Only, you realize that you are longing for a "Home" impossible to get back to, even though you have traveled the road there a million times? It's etched in your memory, and you can see it so clearly as if you had merely driven into town to run a few errands, came back thirty minutes later, and it was all burned to the ground... a shell of the place you felt so safe growing up, thinking your heart would live there forever, even if you did not. You think that it's okay, we all grow up and leave these places, but you will visit a lot, you'll come back and get your soul refreshed, and you've all the time in the world, because you think Home will always be there for you, waiting for its child to return... but when you do come back, it's nowhere to be found. You feel orphaned.

It's like in "It's a Wonderful Life" when the angel shows George Bailey how the world would be if he'd never existed, and he goes around and recognizes places, but they're not the same places, and nobody knows him. He gets to go back, though. I don't. I don't feel like I belong any place anymore. My Mom's house (my childhood home) is like an empty box with just the same outside, only old now. I don't rest well when I visit like I used to, not since things have changed and my Dad is gone. My marital house feels like a dark, lifeless cave sometimes since my divorce, unless I have visitors, and then it brightens for a short while, then the lights go back down.

Then I am lying alone in the dim light of comfort movies, comedies and music that keeps me going, and I just can't help but look at myself in the mirror, and wonder who is this girl staring back at me, though she still looks nineteen, feels and seems nineteen, she has this "far away" look in her eye that she never had back then. It's like you can see a millennium of hurt and disappointment in the now dull shine behind the green tint of those eyes... and she's singing, very faint and low, and still trying to find some way back Home.


6 comments:

  1. Goin' Back Home...

    http://youtu.be/vV0yYcN9QnE

    Dr Feelgood - probably unknown to you in the USA. These boys ripped up the mid 70s. This was one of the songs that turned me onto them.

    Anyway - just thought of it ...

    "Home is where the heart is. Where the heart is there is home" - or some quote like that. I wonder if that is your issue, your heart isn't settled therefore you don't feel like there is a home.

    I'm lucky - the house we live in, and have done for over 20 years, felt right, it felt like home as soon as we moved in on a rainy February day and we sat on the chairs in the wreckage of the removal eating Fish N Chips from the paper as we couldn't even face finding the plates.

    My son was about 18 months, my daughter not even born, I was not even turned 30 thinking about it. We've changed about all you could in that house - well accept the patio door at the back - that is still the same! LOL!

    I was born in my parents old house, as were both my sister and brother. We progressively moved out in the late 70s and early 80s. In 1984 that was the house I drove my Mum and my brother from as quick as I could to the hospital but we were too late, Dad was gone. 8 months or so later I was gone too as I got married and moved out and there was Mum left in a 3 bed family home. In a few years it was too much for her and she moved to a smaller bungalow - I was glad she did, the near 20 years she lived there she was happy.

    Now I have a very good friend who lives opposite my old family home - the house I was born in. But it is just that now, a house, history to me. It feels odd visiting him there and looking at the old homestead on the opposite side of the street and seeing bits of it change and deteriorate.

    With our kids older now and leaving the nest I suppose soon we'll have to think on something new and smaller for us. I hope that has the same "home" feel I've been lucky to have twice so far in life.

    Sorry rambling comment but really got me thinking about it...

    ReplyDelete
  2. BTW - I have two blogs now (sorry to confuse)... the blogger one is more about music, guitars etc. whilst http://guitarsandlife.wordpress.com is the more life stuff...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cool, Furtheron, I will add the other for quick access... and I don't mind you reflecting at all, not in the least as it helps me to feel that I have struck some chord in my reader(s). That's always good, right?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I guess also since my divorce, and with the fact that I am mostly only casually dating a regular friend, I just don't have a 'heart home' again yet, but yeah I do believe home is where the heart is... I think I just need to find a way to press forward, and get to wherever that may be.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Do you need someone else to ensure that? Over the years I've realized it is primarily about me being happy in my own skin where I am. Find that and he there is another to share it with all the better but for me chasing a person to be happy with doesn't seem right

    ReplyDelete

Let me know what's on your mind...