Today's Plans-

I love vacation!

I always tell myself I will grow out my bangs to at least mouth-length. That way, I can do a totally cool hippie center part without bang awkwardnes. THEN I come across pictures like this:



Oh! Be still my heart!I'm trying so hard to stay strong in my growing out phase, but let's see how long that lasts...

FYI- Your coke habit does not help make you edgy, cool, or artistic. It makes you annoying.
End rant.

Vonnegut

"Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns."

Why do I feel this way?

"You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

Four years ago- when I watched Garden State, I was 17 years old. I didn't understand it. I couldn't have. Lately I've been feeling so strange, and I vaguely remembered the above quote.

I have no idea where my home is. I don't even know what my idea of "home" is. New Bedford, as a "home" can never live up to the nostalgia it evokes in me. Sometimes I feel like that is the home I left behind, but I think it's due to the people I left behind a whole lifetime ago. I don't even keep in touch with these people anymore. To return "home" would mean to surrender the aimless wandering I've kept up and return to...what? My last memories of "home" were viewed through the lens of a depressed and anxious high schooler.

Sometimes other places evoke nostalgia that make them feel like "home". Upon further inspection I realize it's not the places, rather the times and experiences.

2007-early 2008 comes to mind; the first year I lived in Allston. I had roommates I really liked after a year of a pretty awful living situation. I made the decision to forgo school- instead I got a pretty sweet waitressing job. Money was always plentiful, and stress was nonexistent.
I remember walking in Back Bay, Cambridge, Allston, Fenway, Brookline. My coat was long, blue, and new. There was an ever-present Starbucks cup in my left hand, and a Camel Turkish Silver glued to my right.
My hair had made the transition from just-skimming-shoulder length to full on shoulder length. It was the longest it had been in over two years. It was jet black and unfaded by the California sun.
To pass the time I went to a lot of shows and took many long walks. I got my head together. I traveled a lot that year. No school, for me meant no stress and no one could have imagined how badly I needed that. I met people who opened my eyes to the kind of life I never want to have. They made me realize how rapidly potential can be lost when it's not exercised. Still, I couldn't figure out what I wanted out of this whole thing. I could see clearly what I didn't want, but that's a blurry map to read for too long...

I'm so confused about which moves to make next. I don't know what makes me constantly second, third, and even fourth guess myself. There are things I only seem able to do if I've informed people I plan to do them, that way I feel held accountable. Is this typical of the lazy people and procrastinators of my generation? Maybe so, but I'd really like to change and it feels like I'm swimming against a downward current. I thought I had made so much progress during that second idea of "home" I just described, but it seems to have been an illusion created by the entire tranquil nature of the situation I was in.

I want to go home. I don't know where home is. It's not here. Maybe it could be here. I really really like it here. I want it to start to feel like home, but everything hasn't lined up right. I'm aware that can take time, and I'm also aware that home probably isn't Boston either. (Unless I can backtrack to 2007). I need roots. My dream has always been to travel the world- to see everything and be tied down to nothing. I fear growing old and feeling stuck somewhere, but for some reason it's all I want right now. I don't feel grounded. I haven't for quite some time.

I don't want anything in my life to be a waste, and I feel that my "wasted" year regarding getting ahead in life was one of my most personally fulfilling years. I'm afraid I'm never going to feel better about this- I'm never going to feel at home anywhere unless I've taken root and recharged first. There are things logic tells me about my situation. I've asked people for advice and they tell me the same things logic does. But it feels like they could be so wrong, and I don't know who to trust.

My life is kind of in a stalemate right now, but at least I still have the great outdoors.