Returning to Old Roots

Today I am amazed how different I have become, how my views have changed in the last seven years as I jumped from one writing job to another.

I grew up in UP; my dad has worked here briefly and as a kid, the family car would always traverse this road on the way home. I grew up feeling close to this university, so much so that I have chosen to study somewhere else in hopes of getting out of my comfort zone. Because I know I can always come back.

Now I return, after more than three years of barely glimpsing at this place. And I realize how estranged we have become. UP was no longer the enclave of my bohemian muse; it's a stranger, a place in the far North that has grown too academic for my renegade sensibilities. The trees have become as foreign as my old self.

And yet I came back, to pursue a track I intended to take three years ago. Walking along the same familiar steps, I wonder if I am returning in a futile attempt to remember the woman I used to be, the one who believed the world awaits conquering. But I, like it, has morphed. The place has lost its allure; the magic that used to bind us--forever gone in the empty years of separation.

The world changed us, scarred us, and left us wistful. It made me lonely. - 5/26/2014