You know when you talk on the phone for an hour or so, with a good friend, and you hang up feeling high and wonderful? You feel like you’re on the same page as someone. You feel loved and understood. You feel not-alone. You feel you.
I have spent so much time being untrue to myself over the past few years, since I left California. I stopped pursuing my dreams. I stopped reading or writing. I settled in to waiting tables. I slept on foreign couches and in foreign beds. I drove home, regularly, as the morning traffic was beginning. I woke up at one in the afternoon, consistently hungover and disoriented. I spent an unhealthy amount of time sitting in a dark, crowded bar.
I was a stranger.
And now that I’ve begun to return to me, I find myself having to confront this other version of myself, I find myself having to admit that I was untrue. I find myself having to face the choices I made. It’s impossible to escape your recent past in a small town. Yet sometimes, I’d almost prefer to. It wasn’t me, I keep thinking. And yet she keeps following me.
When I get on the phone and dial a California area code, I sigh with relief and I am answered with comfort. I am me. I am being true now.
It’s hard to leave your life behind and start over. Perhaps that is what I have been struggling to do these past few years. Perhaps I just dealt with it a little differently.
But now, I feel true. And when I hang up the phone, like I did today, I feel completely happy, I feel at peace. It’s as if someone is reminding me that I’ve been me all along, that the mistakes I made are okay, that these are the moments I want to remember.
There’s no point to any of this. It’s all just a… a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know… a quarter-pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter becomes a cackle… and I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.
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I often wonder what the real me feels like.
I love this…and I can totally relate.
I have moments when I lose myself…can’t figure it out…and then I call and talk to my best friend and she reminds me of who I am.
It’s good to have friends like that…the ones who know your song and remind you of the lyrics if you ever forget.
thanks for this. i recently realized i’d stopped doing the things that made me truly happy years ago. i’ve started to cut things out of my life that don’t bring me joy, but forgot to fill that space with something else. now i’m working to put the good stuff back.
Sounds like a good basis for an ennui-based novel, to me.
i totally relate to this! i feel like the years spent being untrue to myself was not ME. and in fact, you don’t have to “Change”. you, your true self, is exactly who you are and should be.
I know we share a love for Reality Bites and I think it’s totally true that there are certain people who confirm who you “really are”. To be totally 90s, this also reminds me of the quote from My So-Called Life that goes, “There are so many different ways to be connected to people. There are the people you feel this unspoken connection to, even though there’s not even a word for it. There’s the people who you’ve known forever who know you in this way that other people can’t because they’ve seen you change. They’ve let you change.”
Do you ever wonder or consider moving back to California?
I’m sometimes in the same place, with regard to Pennsylvania of course. And times like those make me fantasize a bit about going back, yet in reality, I know it’s not something I could truly do.
For about half a year, I thought about going back to Florida. Whenever I saw a Gainesville number, I missed UF and the family I had made there. I still do after having been gone a year.
But I made a family here. And I am not the same person that first came back to North Carolina.
“There’s nowhere we are that isn’t where we are meant to be.” – The Beatles, yes Mindy did teach me that saying.
i can totally relate.
I totally, completely understand that feeling. I still have moments when I swing out of ‘me’ and into this other character, but they are few and far between now. And that’s my favorite quote from Reality Bites, very nice.
It’s always great to hear about people getting a soul re-charge. In fact, I’m going to call an old friend right now thanks to this post.
@Eric: On top of that, something slice-of-life, beginning and ending in medias res. I would totally pick that up. Seriously!
i love this because i find myself written in every sentence. you, my friend, are sometimes the profoundest thing in my day. so thanks once again.
I hear you on that. It’s easy to get wrapped up in new sensations and lose track of your goals and passions just to make ends meet or gain a new sense of place.
Calling home can give you a sense of self that nothing else can when you’re away. It reminds you why you left and reminds you of where you’re going and what you always wanted.
I love you for quoting Reality Bites
Fascinating story. And it feels damn good to finally feel at home in yourself, doesn’t it?
Beautiful post, love. Even though I get frustrated at some of the drama that emerges when I return to my hometown, I have to admit, there is something about walking those emptier streets and curling up on my old bed that feel more like home.
Oops, I misspoke– of course they feel more like home. I meant feel more like the real me.