PART ONE
The last time I was in MOB was May of 2006, eleven months and countless recollections ago. Visits to “the place I once called home” are always interesting, or at least to anyone unfamiliar with what goes on below the Mason-Dixon Line. For some reason, this trip was slightly more bearable for me. My guess is that I’m finally coming to terms with my childhood, and that’s helping me to (somewhat) enjoy the place where I spent it. Call it comfortable, call it intrigued, call it jaded, call it crazy, because all that’s me!
It was a LONG weekend full of plenty of outdoor/butch activities, such as shooting rifles, playing tennis, kayaking and riding golf carts. Don't ask! There was an exhausting amount of family time, not quite enough friend time, and hardly any me time. As suspected, the homeland is evolving slowly, but surely enough. Some things never change, but others surprise you.
I am gradually learning to (partially) understand my family, but more importantly to respect their eccentricities and appreciate their intentions, no matter how much those intentions are bred out of ignorance and naivety. If they had their way, I would no doubt be in a house on their property eating Sunday dinner with them every week and having an integral part in the family business. While the “alternative life” (meaning moving to NYC) I have chosen is void of some reality, it’s not nearly as void of reality as the life my parents would have orchestrated for me if they could have. But I digress.
Overall, the trip was relatively painless, and for that I could not be happier! It could have been much worse, and has been on previous return trips. Even our attendance at the church service on Sunday caused little to no reaction from me. I’ve learned to shake their hands and sing their songs and respect them, not for the things we have in common, but for their integrity to follow something they believe in. What I do share with them is that integrity. Our beliefs just lie in different things.
Meanwhile, my absence from the island I now call home proved to be quite detrimental. KBH gets sick, the place floods…not to mention the ridiculous massacre in VA. The place seems to go to shit when I’m away, and I am now left to repair the damage done. I guess there is a price to pay for spending time with an ex and allowing the current love of your life to find out about the whole affair, no matter how innocent your intentions!
Today is Thursday. Back to the routine I call beautiful for only a day before it is interrupted by the Sluts of Boston! I guess I’ll catch up on my rest later. MUCH later!
PART TWO*
(*the following was written before leaving for my trip last week, but I didn’t get a chance to post it; hence, the title of the post above. you might want to stop here unless you have a fondness for the sound of a broken record!)
Can you really never go home? Or is that just something we tell ourselves to help rationalize our feelings toward the places we once called home? I’m gonna go with both.
Backstory: I’m embarking on the homeland this Friday, carrying with me residual bitterness and lingering hesitation. I’m continuously trying to rationalize my feelings of resentment toward Mobile. It was the place I was born, but that’s the only credit I can give it. Your home is the place or region where something is native or most common. I consider myself a native of Mobile, but I have nothing in common with what I left behind. This split between me and my birthplace took place long before I escaped over three years ago, and my parents tried desperately to ensure that the break was anything but clean, but I’ve managed to secede from that union and find many more allies amongst the strangers of New York than I could ever find if I was still living near the scene of the crime.
I’ve done a great deal of maturing over the past three years, as well as a great deal of growing apart from the family that raised me to be something I wasn’t. I’ve learned that this process that I’m still undergoing is not about forgetting about where I come from, but rather about remembering how far you’ve come.
And while I’ve come a long way, for some reason I refuse to grow up just yet. Maybe I’m still holding onto something from my childhood that won’t allow me to begin the next phase of my life. I can’t seem to get over my origin, or maybe I’m just frustrated that no one there understands me.
I’m trying to relate to them like I wish they could relate to me, but maybe that’s impossible. Silently petting the pink elephant in the room is the only way any of us know how to maintain the peace. The silence is deafening and the tension is tighter than me and my family will ever be. And that’s just the way it is.
At the end of the day, my family and I have a different idea of what paradise is. Their paradise is a wide-open space filled with nothing more than fresh air and their Lord’s presence. My paradise is a concrete island filled with little more than murderers and the people that love them!
I do, however, have to admit that I never give the South, or anyone that lives there, enough credit. I need to work on giving more credit where credit is due and accepting the fact that the South has done much more to shape me than I might ever like to admit!
