"The day you leave is amongst the most bittersweet of your life, shedding a slightly embarrassed tear in front of those who console you with, “Don’t worry! We’ll visit all the time!” You make plans to call and Skype, to come back as much as possible and walk these same streets. You promise, above all, not to forget them. You are never going to grow so big or so different that you cannot come back and fit the puzzle piece you left when you first went away. There will always be a part of you that is the same, that remembers its roots, that will get the same inside jokes and laugh just as hard as you did the first time. Even the streets themselves seem to call after you as you drive away, “Don’t forget to come back some day!”
And you will, but it will not be the same. The new streets and people will color your vision in a way that you can never fully erase, no matter how many times you visit. Returning to your hometown will, from now on, have a quality of nostalgia to it that prevents you from fully embracing the moment. Sure, you may see your old friends again at a bar someday, but your time will be so limited as to prevent much outside of reminiscing over the times you created. You will begin to see people and things you left as fundamentally different, now that you have a whole new life to compare them to. In the context of your hometown, they make perfect sense. When you see them through the eyes of a visitor, there is so much you don’t understand or relate to anymore. You have all grown up, changed shape, and you no longer fit back into that same puzzle.
"There is so much beauty and stomach-dropping thrill in leaving your hometown, in starting everything over somewhere you chose to be. There are so many things you don’t know about yourself, and stepping outside your comfort zone in such a literal and profound way helps to peel back those layers one by one. But there is a you that existed before you left, that is entirely contained in and defined by where you grew up. And going back to visit that person is like trying to grab a handful of air in a burst of wind — you are surrounded by who you once were, but never able to recreate it."
kianamaiart
ellievsbear
turnnoffyourmind
blakekathryn
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
theartofmadeline
