Friends of Passage

Was that a final farewell?

I had a felt a certain sense of home. "This is a place I can return to" Mais cette "place" a moi elle existe dans le temps, et dans l'espace. Dans quelques annees, mon dernier frere aura gradue et il ira a l'encontre de ses propres obstacles. Comment puis-je retourner dans le temps, a l'endroit de repos?

Truth is, I wander, but I don't really exist anywhere else. I've flown across the world like the shadow of a cloud, leaving next to nothing behind. All these places, it seems, would be just as foreign if I were to return. At times, the people I've met along the way seem little more than acquaintances, addresses on my contact list. People that I've met, that will remember me and who I was; if feels like to expect more is folly. Can I really say that I belong here? There? When I went home I remembered a great many things, that I don't have another place to call home.  I thought that that small town would stay the same forever, a kind of base where my roots are buried. I felt a sense of permanence here, that the people of this place had found it in themselves to accept my presence and my absences, that we would be bound somehow, because of where we had sprung from the ground, our roots mixed and matched as we moved around and spread out into the sky.

But... Were my friends just friends of passage? Everyone has their own road, and it may take them far, farther than I can see, and they may not return here. Is it that I severed my connection when I left, or that I abandoned my bonds to wither while I was away? It's certainly foolish to think that no matter how far I go, how little I think of home, these friends of mine would return to their hometown when I returned to mine, and we would all share stories and get along and part ways "until next time" forever. I may have changed too much to be recognized, and perhaps I can no longer understand when they speak of the old scars. Have I forgotten? Have I moved away from the me they knew, so much that to them I seem just as foreign as the faraway places I talk about? What was I to them? No, what were they to me, if I naively thought they would always welcome me home.

But soon, there will be little left of the home I speak of. Was our last meeting the final farewell, like a check up to see if "oh, you're doing good" to rest the conscience and turn the page? If that is so then my life is just an accumulation of impermanences, of forgotten friends with nothing to say to and eroded memories that have bee discarded or replaced. It's sad, really, to know so many people but have no one to talk to, no one that stays. To live like this... fleetingly... Everywhere and nowhere at once, like a frown or a sad sad smile. Loneliness awaits.

...
But why am I complaining? I chose this. I chose it myself, wholeheartedly. I put everything behind me and jumped into a new adventure again, pausing from time to time to record some insight on a old mystery. It's a lot less difficult to ignore the past and pretend that you've forgotten, but you end up losing yourself completely. Weigh the appeal of the unknown against the happiness of belonging. You already know how much you've gained, but you'll never know how much you've lost.