That’s not my house, btw. It’s a stock photo of a sidewalk from ye old Google images. I felt like a random house image was fitting for what I’m writing about today.
Generally speaking, it’s nice feeling to, after traveling the midwest to get an education and to start working, you can go home to settle in. Whether or not I’m actually settled professionally is still a little up-in-the-air, but in the last year, as probably every reader here knows, I got married and Julie and I settled into a home in the town where I was born, a scant 3o miles or so from Miami, where we work.
For the most part, moving back home has been a good experience. I know where things are, I know what to expect from the populace, and it’s not as hectic or insanely expensive as Oxford. Oxford is a nice place, but it’s hard to deal with trying to find a place to live that isn’t knee-deep in college students and/or priced out of the range of someone of modest means.
But there’s a down side. It’s kind of a pair of down sides, but one was just sort of an “eh, so?” and the second half of it was a significant downer. There are memories in the place where you grew up. They can be positive, but obviously some of them can be negative. There are also–and here’s the bad part– people you just don’t want to see. The whole idea of growing up and moving away is that you move away. And honestly– I think I can say this without being cruel– there are people I just don’t care to see.
Among those ranks are people I haven’t seen in anything from 8 (when my mother left Richmond) to 22 (when I graduated from high school) years. Some I just don’t care to see because we never got along and/or they just represent bad memories. Some just faded away, and I don’t know what to say or do when I encounter them. It’s awkward, you know? “Hey, how were the last 22 years? Oh, really? You have six kids and quit your job to work for the local Trump campaign office?” is not a conversation I should be having. The last category, though, is the tough one. There are people that did things to me and to my mother, people who had issues with my father, and people who just don’t seem to have anything positive to say or do in my life that need to just not be around me.
As an adult, this isn’t a big deal. People can’t just walk into my house. And if you see someone in public, it’s not that major of a deal. I mean, it’s not like I can’t escape an awkward public encounter without taking massive emotional damage. And my father, the focal point of most of my anxiety in this town, is long gone, and I don’t think anyone has the weird impulse they had when was younger to ask if I know how he is or to tell me how much I look like him.
There’s one scenario I didn’t account for in my mind, though. I’ve had some absolutely delightful reunions with people, including running into my very first friend at the local Gamestop, a friend I made before I could form coherent sentences, who lived in the house behind my parents when I was a tiny little pre-toddler, who used to trade toys with me through the chain link fence until his dad came out and cut a little toddler sized hole for us to traverse back and forth, the first real sign to me that native and African American people need to traverse the borders placed between them.
But I never accounted for what happens if someone I don’t want to see is the delivery driver bringing food to my house.
I’m a survivor, and I’m a pragmatist to a fault. I hate confrontation and I hate creating anxiety for others. I should have accounted for the factor that there might be people I didn’t want to see could one day pull up to deliver a package or something. I should have minimized my delivery ordering. But that’s crazy, right? Who lives like that?
Yesterday someone I didn’t want to see, who I didn’t really care to have the knowledge of where I live, delivered food to me. I didn’t even realize who the person was for a few minutes. And it will probably end up to be nothing, that nothing will come of it and it’s just a happenstance. But it feels like a violation of home, you know? I mean this is my space (our, I mean– my vs. anyone not in my family). I shouldn’t have to worry about people I don’t want around being here.
And of course that’s where reality collides with memories of the past. No one can walk into my house without permission. If I don’t consent, you can’t cross my threshold without committing an act of violence and forcing me to call the authorities.
It will all be fine, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that the down side of going back home is that sometimes the things you didn’t want to see will wander up the sidewalk to your door. It’s a fine enough cost, I guess, but when you aren’t ready for it, and you’re just about to sit down for a movie, it takes a psychic toll.
I don’t think it’s asking too much to be left alone. I hope the world realizes that.