Jackson Free Press

This week I've been wistful. I don't know exactly when this mood came about, but I know that it has definitely been affecting my behavior. This mood might have lent itself to listening to Michael Buble's song "Home" on repeat 437 times.

I wanna go home. But I'm technically there. Strange, isn't it?

I think this is a common crisis we "Generation Whatever-ers" suffer under the new guidelines of our "acceptable extended adolescence until 30." We stay younger for longer because of our changed economy and the larger number of kids who attend college, as opposed to how it was during the 1950s. Our parents provide for us for longer amounts of time. Hell, I remember when I came off the teat at 25. I thought Lucifer himself had inhabited my mother and decided her wallet held all the keys to heaven. Therefore, it was closed to me.

The next two years of my life were spent in disbelief as I shopped for things I couldn't afford on my entry-level salary. I really wanted to go home.

This need for warmth only seems to get stronger as I get older. I imagine this is what lights the fires under all those people buying diamond rings and going to law school. This yearning is wishing for something that will never appear unless I create it. This idea that a place exists where my problems fade and the world goes away is holding onto something I've been loathe to even recognize. It's youthful indiscretion. It's idealism. It's angst. It's missing. It's holding out that extra year before you start that retirement plan, and it's refusing to put away the feather boa. It's wistfulness for a place that no longer exists.

I have no home. Yes, I have a house. But I don't yet have that place where I come, and there is someone who offers comfort. A place that wants the best for me. In the movie "Garden State," Zach Braff says that maybe "home" is just an idea that the same group of people miss.
There are people in my life that make me feel like I'm at home. These people remind me of when I was little. When I understood the world and life. When I could do algebra, hell, simple math. When I could bike five miles to the swimming pool and when the neighbors shared each other's kids during the summers. As I watch friends make their own homes, I understand how important family and friends are in my life.

I've been feeling schizophrenic lately because interspersed with these warm and fuzzy feelings about wanting a "home," I have days when I want to walk out of the house, get in the car and never look back. I have those days quite frequently. I've almost done it. Twice. I was at the bank. I was taking out all of the money I had. I was going to go. I didn't know where. But it didn't really matter. It just needed to not be at home.

I want to go. Be free. Let go of the last days of skipping out, running down the street, playing the Indigo Girls and smoking tons of cigarettes while drinking 40-oz. beers.

Five girls in the car and only three-part harmony. I was the alto. I honed my singing skills in the back of a Mazda 626, holding a Bud Light, writing poetry by the dim glow of the interior light.

I remember hitting summer festivals with eight people in a Jeep. There were no jobs, no mortgages. There was nothing but us and the whole world we were going to take down. There were days on the river playing volleyball and watching other couples make out in the water. There was nothing but keg parties and one bar in town to keep the town in babies. The church put up with the rest. The cops knew my name when they pulled me over. They usually told me to go home. Until the third time, when they told my grandfather.

This place was home. And I unequivocally hated it while I was steeped in it.

Where was I running to? Even I couldn't figure it out. Why this incessant yearning for a place that doesn't really exist? Holding onto it seems to make every day more urgent and fruitless. But holding onto it also gives me something to hope for. It gives me a goal. A life. We all need a reason to dream.

I think the best thing to come from this entire post adolescent angst is my understanding that when I truly want to come home, I will just be there.

There will be no moving of boxes, depositing of utilities, and meeting of neighbors. There will just be a moment when I look around me and realize that I made it.

Finally. I'm home.

Previous Comments

ID

71468

Comment

Ali, after moving around so much, and seeing many of my friends do the same, I discovered home is where you are, and what you make it of it. It's a place to relax and tune out the unwanted portions of the world. It a placce of freedom where you can "throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care." Yes, I, too, remember the good old care-free days with no bills, no mortages, and no worries. We can still have those; but I imagine we will awake one day and say I haven't accomplished ____ during my life. During my twenties I longed to be 10 again with a hanfull of marbles. I soon learned that moment couldn't ever be recaptured. Later, I learned to "not slow down tomorrow looking back to yestaerday." You're smart and all those other things I've said before; so, gleefully take on today and tomorrow without much reservation and do all the good you can for yourself and others. And dont forget to have much fun along the way.

Author

Ray Carter

Date

2006-02-23T13:06:37-06:00