Back Home Again

This week, our older son is at a sleep-away camp. This camp happens to be several hours away from home and also in my favorite town in America. I decided to drive him down and stay in town for the week so I didn’t have to drive back and forth. It was partly motivated by my wanting to be close in case of an emergency (which makes me feel crazy to admit) and also by my wanting to have a week in Bloomington, Indiana. Alone. 

Listen, I feel a wide range of emotions about this, from selfish to entirely pleased with myself. I haven’t had this many consecutive nights alone since 2010. Maybe longer. (I just wondered aloud what year it is.) 

So here are some things I’m re-learning about myself, and also some things I’m learning for the first time. 

1. I absolutely talk to myself, but when I’m alone, I do it out loud. I always used to make fun of my mom for muttering aloud to herself, but I speak at full volume. So that’s fun. 
2. I am uncomfortable with lengths of quiet. Music or soccer has been on the whole time I’ve been here. 
3. I am for sure not going to cook anything. There’s a full kitchen stocked with pots and pans and utensils. I got Thai take-out today. I’ll probably get tacos tomorrow. Maybe Indian. I don’t know. I don’t like cooking, and when there are MANY walkable take-out options, I don’t know what you’d expect of me.
4. I really like walking, but I need an end-goal. Our neighborhood at home has endless paths, plus we have the dog who needs to be walked, but those walks feel less satisfying. Just walking for exercise has never felt like enough for me. Probably because I would rather be running and I can’t. When I’m walking with a purpose to end up at X coffee shop or Y store, I can walk forever. I walked almost 10 miles today. My feet hurt a little because most of it was done wearing sandals, so poor choices were made, but nearly 20,000 steps is a fun stat. 
5. I probably shouldn’t have brought a massive bag of chocolate covered almonds. 

I’ve thought a lot this week about why I like this town so much. College was great, but there’s something more going on. Yes, this is a special place with co-ops and intentional community building and friendliness and whatnot. But I think I love this town because it was where I lived when I was deciding who I wanted to be. Not what. Who. I think it happened during the year I lived in town after college graduation, when I was working at a coffee shop and deciding what to do next. 

I’ve said it before and should stop saying it, but I thought for a long time that I did college wrong. I rowed and took classes I liked and came out of it without a real career path but with a deep sense that everything would work out somehow. I didn’t know then how idealistic my picture of the future was, nor did I realize how much easier the following few years would’ve been if I’d thought about it and made a plan for myself, rather than just bumbling along from choice to choice. 

But being here again with time to walk and think, I see that I was doing some important stuff, despite my self criticism. I was framing out a sense of self that would serve as the basis of my personality. 

I knew a guy once who blamed a lot of his life problems on being an only child, and my reaction then, as is my reaction now, was, yeah but you’re an adult now. Make your own decisions. Now sure, early experiences shape us and lots of people feel birth order can have an effect on personality traits. But a person can choose to have more control over their behavior if they choose to be intentional. 

I don’t mean to be glib. It’s hard work, that type of intentionality. A person needs to be willing to see, acknowledge, and accept their circumstances. They need to process hardships. They would need willingness to change, which is not a given. 

The fact that I have been able to look back on and be a little kinder to my past self this week makes me feel like I’ve found another purpose for this trip. I had to be on my own long enough for my thoughts to wander toward new conclusions like this. I still feel so at home here even though I haven’t lived here in 19 years because I planted part of my heart here as I grew. Coming here feels like a refresh, a reminder of who I am and who I can be when I feel good and sure of myself. 

So this reconnection with my former self has brought me some peace. Hopefully it'll be a peace I can carry with me and bring this Bloomington version of myself when I get back home again, to present day.