When You Leave Your Childhood Home Behind

Do you remember your last night at home? The home you grew up in with the familiar cracks in the paint and the squeaky sound of the stairs.

Do you remember your last night falling asleep in your bedroom? The bedroom that had a particular color on the walls, that was your sanctuary for all the nights that came before.

Let me preface this by saying that this is not supposed to be a nostalgia-fueled lament, because I’ve done that too much already.

This is not supposed to narrate countless memories of bygone decades as I continue to grow a little more with each passing year.

This is not about the fierce attachment to my hometown, as you may have with yours, dwelling within the day to day, through the highs and lows.

It’s not about being where I’m supposed to be or where I’m going to go; it’s not about wanting to be where I’m supposed to be and where I’m going to go.

No, you see, it’s not really not about that.

I guess, if I have to narrow it down, if I have to be completely succinct, it’s about the plain and hard-hitting truth of getting older. Tt’s about no longer hiding behind the protective guise of young adulthood, floating about life’s choices, just as I’d float about the Atlantic ocean on a hot mid-summer afternoon.

I guess it’s about the general feeling of youth that was captured within my lavender-colored bedroom walls. I guess it’s knowing that it is youth we can recall but can never get back.

Yet, in some beautifully twisted way, it does make sense — to try, to discover, to experience, to ultimately take the leap, to propel further along down the winding roads ahead.