On growing up

It's interesting to find myself on the eve of a trip home. While I've been hearing that the only way I'd get out of here is in a body bag for a good 14 months (and if that's what's getting straight to my ears, imagine what other people are hearing), there was a definite resistance to a homecoming fortified with 'and then what?'
The interesting part is that after enough months of fighting to be here and make it work, fighting to let go of the illusion of safety and security, fighting to get up and going on my own swollen ankles, tearing up at the thought of my dog and telling people 'it is just me, on my own, just me, no, just me,' to keep from crying at the thought of fishing with Dad, Dottie's steaks with a peacock serenade, sitting on the sofa with Mom, listening to Darrell's music, after ages of being ready to drop everything--EVERYTHING--to catch the next flight home if only I heard 'here's how to move ahead and reconstruct a life' instead of 'you're killing us with worry so get your stubborn ass home you ingrate!' after that hurting and enduring and yearning, I realize that there was also much growing.
When I left, I was very much 18, having spent the intervening decade in/around college. There was never a break from the seasonal lifestyle going back to, oh, kindergarten. There was never a need to figure out how to go about establishing my own nest when there was either school or the place I love and revere and had the fortune to grow up exploring.
Now I'm in a different place. I'm not out to build a nest, certainly--'hmm, do I go toOman or Peru?) but I realize that the place I think of as home is not anymore. Much as I dislike the thought of some punkass dude with jackhole friends living in my room, much as I wish I could babysit the dogs and snowblow Mom's driveway, that's not the reality of my life anymore. One day I hope it will be again, but for now I need to be where I am, occupied as I am, trying to find out who that I critter is and what it's after.

There's the idea of the Neolithic rite of passage being a lonely crawl through a dark cave with the gods raining fire and misery.
Well, here I am on the other side, and ain't no way in hell I'm going back through that to get to where I thought I was, or imagined I wanted to be. Something like that.
Regardless, how wonderful it will be to revel in the illusions and dreams, and then how wonderful to get back to the concrete reality I know through my own creation.

Sent from Candid the iPad