You can't go home again

I'm sitting on my bed in my childhood home, pink walls and Lord of the Rings posters create the stage for what was my life. Now I only visit. I don't miss it, or at least I don't miss most of it. I don't miss this town that felt like pillow over my face smothering my creativity, my curiosity. I don't miss the tension and arguments that filled, and still rattle around inside this house. But there are things I do miss. Some of these things are material; my mom's cooking, walking barefoot in the wide open fields. Some of the things I miss are less tangible but no less real. I miss the comfort of having someone always there to talk to, I miss the pace where nothing is urgent everything can take it's time. Explaining how I feel about this place is impossible I am filled with the strangest nostalgic longing for a place that most of the time I despised. But the smell of fresh air and green growing things fill me with the longing to escape the city and go back to a different time, a different place, a different self. One who was so much more naive, a little girl who faced the world with anger for what it had thrown and at her, full of fierceness and idealism. But we can't ever go back. So I am left to embrace the woman who is sadder, but also more gentle, more loving and so much more hopeful. Because she knows that the merits of going back are far outweighed by the merits of going forward.