This place I once called home

I'm sitting in my broken chair, at the desk that's etched with all my high school thoughts and jottings, in the room that I so gladly decorated like a 12-year-old's perfect dream room harmony of magazine clippings, movie posters, and tacky picture frames, in the house I've only truly lived in for 3 short years. I am in Elkhart. I am home (but am I really?)

I used to feel like coming back home should make me feel transformed somehow. Driving my little red car down Spring Creek Trail and turning the corner at the last driveway on the left should be transporting me to the past, and I, much older, wiser, and educated, should walk through the cherry pine doorway from the garage and into the house as an out of place soul. When I spend weeks and months away, the first steps always feel this way. My ego far too changed to find any commonalities in the brand new pricey baskets my mother has displayed all along the tops of the kitchen cupboards. Nothing really looks the same. Just as I do not look the same. Just as I am not the same.

But days go by, I tell you, and as the days do pass the gap between unfamiliar and familiar shrinks. My ego, shrinks. You see I always feel I do the most growing when I'm away from this place, Elkhart I mean. Elkhart is like this forever stagnant cesspool of decaying thoughts and dreams. No one ever goes anywhere worth noting. Nothing noteworthy ever happens. And even in this little house back on Spring Creek trail, among Ox Bow County Park's lush evergreens and the constant chirping of wild birds, I am still affected. The poisonous air that intoxicates every man, woman, child, and animal is still able to seep through the cracks between windows and doorframes of our little ranch home. And I am infected.

Sometimes I am disillusioned into believing that staying in the house with keep me safe from contamination. That the fresh air of Ox Bow's evergreens have enough strength to force clear air my way, that my mood can stay above 50%, that thoughts and ideas can still move freely through my mind, but they don't. And suddenly I'm contaminated before I even know it.

Being in Elkhart makes me feel lazy, ungrateful, boring, and void of any new ideas. It can completely ruin my mood simply by being itself. It's never changing and it's never genuine. I used to love this place before I realized how dutifully it kept me here. It trapped me, made it so I couldn't breath.

The biggest question is, is this poisonous air something that truly hangs as I've suggested, in the air, or does it stem from the poisonous air I breathe out? Is it just so good at keeping things here that it keeps all of my resentment in a little bubble fitting perfectly around me wherever I go? Maybe I just hate it here, and thus a self-fulfilling prophecy is coming into play. I just can't shake the way I always feel like I digress when I'm home. People I at first was able to tolerate, I no longer can. Things I once found entertaining, I no longer do.

I know that nothing gold can stay, but is it too much to ask that my home in Elkhart, the house where I did the majority of my maturing, could keep even an ounce of gold left in it, so that I might be able to hold onto it for the full 2 weeks that I've decided to stay? Because if it doesn't...I think I may go crazy.

This is Me

I posted this originally on april 20th 2009. It's time I read through it again


Electric
I can feel it closing up
The space between
Forces inside of us
Pulling me to you
And pulling you to me

Across the room
Our eyes meet
Boy and girl
Trying to fight the force
The electricity

Feet move forward
We can only obey
Hands reach out
We do the things we want to do
We can’t fight it

Even if it’s wrong
We can’t fight it
Say what you want to say
Hide what you’re too afraid to say
It's out of our control

The words exchanged
The smiles given
It’s undeniable
Nothing can tear apart
The electricity

When I’m standing
With you
The electricity
Takes hold
Of everything.