Change

A friend of mine recently pointed out that I am unusually keenly aware of change.

Maybe that’s why I don’t like it?

I don’t mind evolution. I don’t mind change in a growing way…I just hate finality: breakups, permanent moves, death.

My parents are moving. And for the past 4 months I’ve been living in the room I grew up in. I started officially packing up today. This has been the one room I’ve lived in for the majority of the last 12 years. And when you’re 23, well that’s more than half your life.

I started going through my bookshelf and putting things in boxes. Most every book brought back a memory. Reading “Number the Stars” in middle school…graphic design books from college…theology notes from a summer leadership seminar in highschool…there’s a lot of life on that book shelf.

Here’s the thing that it all comes down to. I know when things will never again be the same. I can feel it like, in my bones. And this is one of those times. My parents are moving to Lynchburg. There is going to be a house that they will make a home and it will be their home but it won’t be mine. This yellow room I’m in right now feels like my room because I grew up in it. Nothing like that will exist in Lynchburg. No memories or childhood attached to the rooms there. Of course it will be the one house in the world where I will feel more welcomed than any other, but it won’t be my ‘home.’

So for the first time I’m really going to have to make my house my home. First I’ll have to find one. Then one day it will really be my home.

Wow isn’t growing up weird?

From the movie Garden State:

Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.