the suburbs (continued) // arcade fire
for seven years, the place i called home never truly felt like home. i always felt like the outsider, the outlier, the vines of kudzu that eat ate the trees and cover everything in green. i was the puzzle piece that never quite fit right. i was the flower that couldn’t be planted with the other seeds in the bed.
only after leaving to find what i thought would be my new home did i realize just how much at home i felt in hernando.
i spent seven years sitting and waiting, and in all that time, i never quite knew what i was waiting for. maybe now that i’m not waiting anymore, i’m realizing that what i was waiting for was for home to finally feel like home. i wasn’t waiting to find a new home or waiting for suburbia to fertilize the soil i was planted in. i was waiting to feel home, not just reside in it.
i wasted so much of my time and so much of my energy trying to escape, and now i sit here and miss home. i miss ladybug bakery and my chemistry class and la siesta and the kroger marketplace and commerce street. i miss the town i’ve come too know and love but didn’t even realize i love until i was leaving it.
i never expected to be sitting here at a school i’ve dreamed of for so many years because i saw it as my chance to get away from home and actually miss home.
maybe suburbia just creeps up on you when you least expect it, and maybe it crept up on me seven years too late. maybe that feeling i’d been searching for the whole time was always there, and i just had to sit down for a minute and find it. it’s the one puzzle piece you spend ages looking for, just for it to have been right under your nose the whole time.
i’m okay with admitting that i miss home. i’m okay with admitting that writing this series has helped me realize that the things i’d assumed about the suburbs are wrong. but if it weren’t for those wrong assumptions, i can tell you for a fact that i would not be sitting here right now.
for seven years, i let the suburbs motivate me to get out of them. i let them push me to want to find where i belonged.
i still don’t quite know where i belong yet. i don’t know where i’m going, and i don’t know how i’m going to get there, but i know where i’m from, and only i can decide where to go from there.
