I can see how a person could fall in love with a place that isn’t their hometown.
There are so many people who never leave where they grew up. They date people from their area, drive down the exact same roads every single day, and build a life out of routines that stopped feeling new years ago just because they’ve become so familiar.
I’ve always been scared to leave where I grew up. But there’s also always been a part of me that wondered what it would be like to make a new home.
To build new memories. To meet new people. To walk down roads that don’t already know every version of you. To live somewhere with a completely different history embedded into the land. A whole new life where no one knows your name.
And now here I am, fifteen hundred miles away from everything I’ve ever known…
And it’s so different.
The air feels different. The trees are different. The flowers. The roads. The people. The views. Even the history…
And I find myself liking it.
I keep looking around in this weird mix of wonder and excitement because everything is so new to me.
And I don’t know… there’s something strangely intimate about someone showing you their roads. The routes they’ve driven down their entire life.
As we drive down another stretch of road that’s completely ordinary to him, I catch myself wondering about all the different versions of him that have driven down it before.
What was he worrying about while absentmindedly staring out the window as he drove through each bend and up every hill? How many times did he drive home smiling because something good had happened? How many times did he cry here? How many huge life decisions were made while driving through these liminal spaces that now just feel…
normal to him?
It’s a strange sort of feeling to realize that every ordinary place has quietly witnessed someone’s entire life.
I think this trip has also given me a renewed appreciation for my own country. I’ve always known the United States was huge, but I don’t think I ever truly appreciated just how different we all are, right down to the way the trees sway in the breeze, the even how the land beneath your feet feels like it belongs to a different story.
And now I keep thinking about when I have to leave.
Am I actually going to feel homesick…
For a place I only just met?