SETTING: So I drove home to Wyoming recently. I live in Seattle. (...is "live" even the right word? How do you define where you live? Maybe it is just wherever you are at the time...) But anyway. So I go to school in Seattle, but I am from Wyoming. I lived in various parts of Wyoming for about 9 years, and my mom was from there so it has always been a bit of a staple in my life, even when my family was living in Utah or wherever. But anyway. So I went back to Wyoming for a visit after being away for 6 months.
STORY(ish): The entire time I was driving back I felt like I was going back in time or something. Like I had never really left. Like nothing had changed. Even though it had. A lot. I was even kind of fooled that it might still be Winter there when I got back. And while I was there everything kind of fell into place. I drove the same roads, took the same paths, went to the same places. All out of sheer habit. Instinct. It was different there. But it was the same. I mean. I did not have a bedroom. Or a job. Or a reason for being there. But it still felt like home kind of. I still felt miserably trapped after spending too much time in that house... It still meant seeing so many people whom I love. Many not as often as I would like... What was different was that I kept getting confused about where I would be that night when I "went home". Like it was possible to fall asleep in my bed in Seattle immediately after saying goodnight to my friends in Wyoming. (Would that not be nice? Ha.) I suppose this is because they both kind of feel like "home" to me right now...
THE POINT: The point is not me. It is not Wyoming vs Seattle. It is home. It is "the reason for being there". It is about why people stay in one place or another. It is about an anchor. Which is something that I severely lack. I cannot live in Wyoming, because that would feel like failing (I will explain that another time). Also, Wyoming always feels so...trapped...but like being trapped in an elevator with your favorite people. Seattle has a lot of opportunity, but it is so far from so many people and so...industrial. I would like to move somewhere new, move all the time, explore the world, but the first few months after moving to somewhere new are always very miserable. (And bad for me. The first few months after all of my moves have just been a whirlwind of self destruction. I am not sure I want to subject myself to what all that instability does to me...) I am uncertain about so many things. But what I do know is that I have not found the place I want to spend my life in yet. I have discovered that everywhere is the same. No matter where you are you will have the same problems, etc. So the only thing that must keep people in one place verses another is an anchor. A job. A person. A house. For me, what I think I keep following/trying to find is an environment. I came to Seattle for the clouds and rain. But I also want thunder. And trees....forests. All around me. The smell of burning pine. And thunder. How I miss thunder... (Seattle rains, but it does not storm.) And less people. I want to live in a small town that is conveniently close to a big city (like two hours away or something).
The point is anchors. I do not have one. I am a lost ship at sea. Going anywhere and everywhere. But I do have an idea of the kind of place that I would like to be. The environment I would like to be surrounded by. Yet it is possible that I would give up on that environment if something stronger anchored me in another direction...
Do you have an anchor? Tellll me about it.
ALSO: In relation to the aforementioned classes which have been eating up all of my words, I am an English type/Creative Writing hopeful major, which requires me to write a lot of words. So...maybe if I am feeling brave, I will throw some of that up here for y'all to read, critique, whatevah. We will see...
PS: This is probably the closest thing to "freewriting" that I have posted here before. Usually I plan things out, edit, etc. I just wrote. Which turned out very bloggy and not as thought provoking as I would have liked...oh well...
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