Dec 18, 2013 •
It’s weird not going home for the whole holiday.
And to be quite honest, I haven’t really felt like Deepwell has truly been my home in maybe the last year or so.
I know, before you start yelling at me, take a listen: it’s that I don’t feel like I deserve it. The timing was sort of terrible, you know? Here I am, just some ordinary kid (my theory is that I am a kid until at LEAST 30), feeling the borders of my town closing around me like a big hug or some similar metaphor, and then Ruby comes along and questions that.
At that age, I guess, it was stereotypically time for ME to to question things. Mostly, I was irritated at Ruby, and then I began to see what she meant. And then I left to go to college, and I found out how much I liked words (essays were the WORST for me in high school), and how much I liked the world getting bigger, and suddenly no borders could hold me. Deepwell was a place where life continued to happen, but it was all stuff I thought I had already figured out. I had new people to get to know, to get to care about in my own way in all of my classes, in every roller derby in the hallway outside my dorm room.
You wonder sometimes why it’s hard to get younger people into caring? Well, I’ll tell you one reason: their worlds open up, and suddenly, there is so much new stuff, there is so much to do! Slowing down and returning home feels impossible, sometimes backwards. It takes a great effort for me to maintain a grip on all of the pieces of me that are scattered at home and all over Deepwell and in the dorms at school, and each lecture hall on campus. Because I am healthy, my brain often tricks me into feeling invincible. It’s in all the coming of age stories. It’s one of the first things they teach you – the nasty downside of The Hero’s Journey.
And now, I am heading to Ithaca.
Why Ithaca?
I was actually home for the weekend recently for an engagement party for my sis when I ran into Kerrek at the library. He was on the computer getting his internet time in, like he always does, and he had maps up on the screen of New York State. He was pointing and smiling, and said that there was a ‘an old Deepwell of the future’ there.
Intrigued, I grabbed the terminal next to his, and did my own search.
Wow.
Part of me wants to go just because I can’t believe it. How can a town thrive on what essentially amounts to paying for your groceries with Monopoly Money? Part of me wants to feel inspired by it – maybe I can find a piece of my own Deepwell in a new place, and then I will feel less guilty about coming home from now on.
Plus, uhhhhhhhhhhhhh, there may or may not be a cute girl who lives in Rochester who’s in my Math recitation on Tuesdays.
Look, I wasn’t kidding about the world opening up, OK? I’m multi-tasking, here!
Wow HOURS are awesome! We might need to take a note from the past on this one…
Hey Drew,
College is the time to explore, experiment, find yourself. I hope you can enjoy this time and appreciate it. Don’t feel guilty.
I just wish I had the courage to go away to school but I was too tied to Deepwell and too afraid to venture that far away. I envy you. Have fun in Ithaca (and Rochester, wink, wink!)
I am working on the not guilty part by making my new adventures feed into the old.
I dunno how good I will be at it, but if we college kids of the computer age can’t multi-task, who can????
dr001138,
I would not sweat coming back to your home town. Your speech gives away that you’ve been listening to the elders of Deepwell for years.
1-Listening the Kerrek about local funny money?
2-Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey”?
3-and the “until I’m over 30″ comment? “The Howdy Doody Show” went off the air in 1960!
Now that you have given away that you have been listening to their wisdom, they’ll want to how you (as the next generation) can make the new future out of it.