It's funny how coming home after a long time, even if it's just a handful of weeks, can take you back instantly to a completely different time.
Tonight I was home in Mountain Brook for a dermatologist appointment and I was awestruck by the significance of every single landmark I passed. On our way to dinner, we drove by a local elementary school that wasn't just an elementary school to me. It's where I would go to hang out with friends at night in high school when there wasn't much else to do. I can't really recall our reasoning for going there of all places, but I guarantee it was most likely my idea. Oh, it's a Saturday night and we can't decide what to do: "I know! Let's go to Crestline to swing and play tennis and lay on the field and tell each other about our lives." Yep, definitely sounds like my logic.
I pass my best friend's house and it weirds me out that her family, which is almost my family, is still there, going about their business like graduation and college never happened. My friend is kicking it up on the Plains and leading a different, separate life from me. Making new friends and reestablishing herself amidst her new "place", just as I desperately grasp around Alabama for anything to latch onto for a sense of comfort or identity. And isn't that what your supposed to do? To go out and make friends while getting involved in as many activities as possible, all in attempt to assimilate yourself to a new home? A new place with new memories?
A brick wall reminds me of waiting for my mom to pick me up after dance in elementary school. The same brick wall also reminds me of a powderpuff football practice in 10th grade. Jemision Trail reminds me of walks with my friends, Goober's car wreck and many, many runs to the tunes of John Mayer and Avett Brothers through the scorching June humidity. A country club pool makes my heart ache as I wonder what my lifeguard friend is doing in Nashville right about now, while I simultaneously laugh to myself at the recollection of illegal fully-clothed night swims. My church radiates Christmas Eve services and VBS's and Underground Church games. I associate the hill by the high school with running late in the cold briskness of morning. Even the DQ across 459 means performing full out cheers in the restaurants, all for a free blizzard on a game day. You don't even want to get me started about the high school with it's halls, it's gyms, it's fields and of course, it's people.
Home.
Comfort, ease, familiarity.
Memories.
All of the sights of Tuscaloosa, while known to me, are tied with my days of going to Alabama games with the promise of driving home at the the end of the 4th quarter. Now, my friends that I spent many Saturdays with are no longer at my side and I find myself in a mad scramble to find anyone to fill the void. But that's the issue: replacement. The purpose of growing up and moving on isn't to replace what you are leaving behind, but to add to your repertoire of experiences and memories.
To expand your "places".
To add on to your clusters of friends.
To find new hot spots to go and simply be on nights where there's little else to do.
To locate more brick walls, more running routes and more opportunities for free food retrieval.
To multiply both the people and sights you love,
along with those who will love you back.
And it's not like this moving on thing will ever end, so I might as well come to grips with the restlessness that comes with human nature and learn to fully embrace my surroundings, not as the replacements I feared them to be but as the opportunities that I begged them to become. First, Alabama; next, the world. (Yes, this is my motivational phrase of the month. Bring on the judgement, I can take it.)
So I'll keep doing my thing, dancing around trying to do it all and be it all and writing more sentences with simple structure and repetitive wording to generate tones of simplicity but not complacency. I'll be making more memories and finding more things I am impossibly, incredibly passionate for, just as I have been doing for as long as I can remember. Thanks for checking in and for the massive encouragement I've gotten over the past couple weeks. It means so much more than y'all know and I love you guys to the moon and back twice.
Allie
I pass my best friend's house and it weirds me out that her family, which is almost my family, is still there, going about their business like graduation and college never happened. My friend is kicking it up on the Plains and leading a different, separate life from me. Making new friends and reestablishing herself amidst her new "place", just as I desperately grasp around Alabama for anything to latch onto for a sense of comfort or identity. And isn't that what your supposed to do? To go out and make friends while getting involved in as many activities as possible, all in attempt to assimilate yourself to a new home? A new place with new memories?
A brick wall reminds me of waiting for my mom to pick me up after dance in elementary school. The same brick wall also reminds me of a powderpuff football practice in 10th grade. Jemision Trail reminds me of walks with my friends, Goober's car wreck and many, many runs to the tunes of John Mayer and Avett Brothers through the scorching June humidity. A country club pool makes my heart ache as I wonder what my lifeguard friend is doing in Nashville right about now, while I simultaneously laugh to myself at the recollection of illegal fully-clothed night swims. My church radiates Christmas Eve services and VBS's and Underground Church games. I associate the hill by the high school with running late in the cold briskness of morning. Even the DQ across 459 means performing full out cheers in the restaurants, all for a free blizzard on a game day. You don't even want to get me started about the high school with it's halls, it's gyms, it's fields and of course, it's people.
Home.
Comfort, ease, familiarity.
Memories.
All of the sights of Tuscaloosa, while known to me, are tied with my days of going to Alabama games with the promise of driving home at the the end of the 4th quarter. Now, my friends that I spent many Saturdays with are no longer at my side and I find myself in a mad scramble to find anyone to fill the void. But that's the issue: replacement. The purpose of growing up and moving on isn't to replace what you are leaving behind, but to add to your repertoire of experiences and memories.
To expand your "places".
To add on to your clusters of friends.
To find new hot spots to go and simply be on nights where there's little else to do.
To locate more brick walls, more running routes and more opportunities for free food retrieval.
To multiply both the people and sights you love,
along with those who will love you back.
And it's not like this moving on thing will ever end, so I might as well come to grips with the restlessness that comes with human nature and learn to fully embrace my surroundings, not as the replacements I feared them to be but as the opportunities that I begged them to become. First, Alabama; next, the world. (Yes, this is my motivational phrase of the month. Bring on the judgement, I can take it.)
So I'll keep doing my thing, dancing around trying to do it all and be it all and writing more sentences with simple structure and repetitive wording to generate tones of simplicity but not complacency. I'll be making more memories and finding more things I am impossibly, incredibly passionate for, just as I have been doing for as long as I can remember. Thanks for checking in and for the massive encouragement I've gotten over the past couple weeks. It means so much more than y'all know and I love you guys to the moon and back twice.
Allie
"Maybe
there’s something you’re afraid to say, or someone you’re afraid to love, or
somewhere you’re afraid to go. It’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna hurt because it
matters."
–John Green
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