return

return

i went home for
three days.

back to see my old
hometown, one i haven't
seen in fourteen years.

i hated that town.

it was dead and full of
people who just don't
get it.

turns out i was the misfit.

story of my life.

always the outsider but now
i know that is just my lot in
life as an old soul.

anyway, i didn't recognize
hardly a thing!

the quiet hilly two lane road
i used to ride my bike on is now
a four lane highway lined with stores
we would only see in the city.

the quiet avenue i used to ride
my horse on is narrow and dangerous
looking now when it used to appear
wide and safe.

the fields and woods i roamed are
now subdivisions with only the memories
of picking owl pellets, filling our bellies
with mulberries and being chased by
the "old ghost", the farmer up the road.

the sad thing is that now i see it and
think "i maybe should have stayed."

did i do the wrong thing in insisting
on moving north?

was i just too impatient and short
sighted?

what a realization on my part and
not a good one...

my father, an alcoholic who has/had colon
cancer just lives in the living room and in
some ways hasn't changed one bit.

i dreaded going back because of him.

he makes me feel like a small five year
old and now that i am not that skinny
girl anymore and he has his way of making
one remember they are fat, i dreaded it.

how selfish and self centered of me :(.

but really, it all went fine and i even kissed
him goodbye when i went to leave.

something i haven't done since i was a little
girl.

i am realizing as much as i wanted to
get away from them all when i left home
at seventeen they are now all i have in
this world that matters.

whodathunk?