"Home Again, Naturally..."

I went home to Houston for about a week early this summer. It was a good time to go: the slow season at work, the hot-as-hell-season in Fresno, and the not-yet-hurricane-season in Houston. Anyway, as usual, I anticipated the trip with strange mixture of happiness, fear, excitement, and dread. Home does that to people, I think.

For me, home is a safe retreat from the real world. It is a place I can completely be myself
and get back into the person that had idealistic views of the world. It is a place of comfort and a world of peace. Usually I spend at least one complete day sleeping as if I'm trying to catch up on the sleep I miss being out in the real world. It is only at home I'm completely safe.

On the flip side, all my childhood worries rear their ugly head. My parents' approval regain prominence again. While I want to brag of my latest conquests, I have an innate fear that these are still not good enough. As my parents' daughter, I'm never as good as I could be. That's the worst part about being home. At 30, I'm independent, healthy, happy, yet, according to them, I could be better, choosing better. There are also memories I don't want to relive or talk about or experience again. Houston has that affect on me. I'm afraid I'll see people who knew me once and I'll have to explain the very inadequacies my parents see. Irrational? Yes, probably but, it's obviously an issue I have to deal with.

So that is home. I love the first couple of days and then, after Dad slips up and says something critical, I wish I was back in Fresno....or, for that matter, any place that is not near home. Some would say this is me wanting to escape. My rationale is that it is me removing myself from the negativity. Shit. Am I psycholgically fucked or what? This, of course, is the same question I, amidst a deluge of fresh tears, posed to my brother. He, the closest person to being raised the same way, nodded his head in mock sarcasm with a vehement "yes!" You can't escape family.

So, then I returned to Fresno: sad, pensive but relieved. I know I will always return even if it is to visit but at that moment I'm glad my duty for the year is done and now I'm on reprieve until next year.

L.H. at work asked me if I was starting to see Fresno as home now that I have been here a little more than a year. I didn't hestitate when I said "no". Home is where the heart is no matter how psychologically fucked.