It's 8:00 on a Friday night, I'm sitting at Barnes and Noble with books and assignments sprawled out around me, which has become my Friday ritual. Embarrassing, I know, but true. I've started to dread the weekends, as they are stark reminders that my life is not full. So I stay busy, however I can.
It's been a little over a year since I moved back to Anderson from Tampa. My life has changed completely, yet is nothing like I expected.
I'm of a totally different mind these days, which I'm embracing, albeit unsettling. I've noticed this most through conversations with my closest friends. With each long distance call, there is less common ground, the silences longer and more uncomfortable.
I've been too fearful to speak the truth of my now; fearful that they'll soon realize that I'm no longer the friend they knew.
In moving home, I naively believed that I would come back to the life I left seven years ago. That my circle of friends would be the same, that everything I knew and loved would simply fall back into place. It's been bittersweet learning that nothing stays the same for long.
Over the years, I've become comfortable with change. It's the stillness that's hard. It's the stillness that I run from. The stillness demands answers, honesty, confrontation.
Such stillness dealt with me, harshly, yesterday. Early in the day, I looked over an old journal, that chronicled the events that led me back home; the slow crumbling of the life I knew. The day was full of unwelcomed memories, and an awareness that despite all my changing, the pain of those days lingers.
I realized yesterday, that my walking away didn't equal letting go, but I'm finally ready for that.
What that entails, I'm not entirely sure. But I'm ready.
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