I don’t belong here.
I sort of belong here…
…But I know deep down in my heart that the place where I really belong…really REALLY belong is here…
My hometown.
My trees, my grass, and my curvy creek (say “crick”).
That creek–where I would trek to every day during the summer, following the deer path along the stream until I heard the rushing of the water. When I was sad, I’d cry on the bank of that creek. Sometimes, I’d sit on a log that fell into the water–listening, thinking and crying. Wondering how to fit together all of the pieces of my life that made no sense to me at the time.
Filled with so much teenage angst that I wished that I could just drown myself in that curvy creek, but I wasn’t angsty enough to figure out how.
I still get butterflies in my stomach when I think about it. The way that the air was clean and crisp, and how the bed of pine needles felt so prickly and familiar on my skin when I sat next to my creek.
The warmth, security, and the comfort of that place. It was my safe place. The place where many years later, in therapy, I would visit time and again when I found myself someplace scary and unstable in my journey. I’d lay there, in my mind, and remember all of the things that made me love that spot next to the creek.
Sometimes I’d even walk there in 2 feet of snow, with no regard for frostbite. Limbs and digits be damned; that feeling was just more important.
I need it. I just can’t recreate it–that feeling.
I’ve tried. An overpriced house on the water. Trips to the ocean. A local reservoir. A man-made lake. They just don’t come close. They’re too commercial, too dense, too foreign. They don’t even smell right, and the air isn’t the same. They’re just not my creek.
I can’t sit by my creek anymore the way that I used to. Sure, I can travel to my parents house–they haven’t gone anywhere. However, the land all around my creek has now been sold, and I fear that I might get shot if I trespass, or be mistaken for a deer during hunting season (this is in the country, after all).
In all honesty, I miss most things about “home”, not just my creek. Part of my soul lives there without me. My family keeps it safe, and I can go back to visit it whenever I want to. As I get older, I become more and more aware of this missing part of my soul. So far away from it. I miss it. I’d like to have it back someday.
For now, I’ll just have to visit it when I can.
