home for the holidays.

{ December 20, 2009 @ 10:06 am } · { Uncategorized }

Being my mother’s child, the need to write struck at 4:45 AM, lying in bed trying to sleep. Genetics, pfft.

A gigantic part of being a university student, at least, one that lives away from home, is exactly that – home.

I’ve already written about it, twice.

But today I’ll write about why we go away from home. And why it’s not exactly unbearable to come back.

A lot of us left because we felt trapped and treated like children, or our hometown was a mite too small, or our parents were of the helicopter variety, or all of these reasons combined.

A lot of us realized that we were wrong when we thought that that particular life was the worst in the entire world, and it would kill us sooner or later if we didn’t run off to university and start a new one. In reality that life just wasn’t for us, but most of us now see what the blinders of high school and a desire to be ‘grown up’ blocked from our perspectives. I’ve had late night conversations or chats over dinner about those things, the bits we couldn’t appreciate until now.

At home, you have the knowledge that no drunk 18 year old is going to kick down the door at the end of the hallway yelling “SPARTA!”, and that the neighbours won’t rip the Christmas decorations off your door (unless you have really sucky neighbours…). At both homes you now realize the fact that you just feel better after the room’s been vacuumed and maybe that’s why mom made you do the living room weekly, and the fact that most of the time when you were reminded that after November you generally need to put on a coat wasn’t just an old person being ridiculous, it’s the truth.

All along, they were just trying to tell me the truth.

I’m glad some of those blinders are gone. Some are probably still there – I refuse to believe the authorities in my life are actually crazy, so there must still be reasons I can’t always reason with them. Numerous times I’ve turned to M and said, “One day, when my mother comes to her senses, we can tell her these stories about our foolish youth, and her heart will keep beating.”

So for now, I’m home and safe and warm in my old bedding in my old room, and surrounded by people I love and that love me back. Who doesn’t love the holidays?