Home Is Where... Re-thoughts
May. 25th, 2008 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
exhilarationI said the other day that this house feels like home to me.
It doesn't. It feels like I live here. But it's not home. It's never going to be home. I don't know why I ever thought that. I'm not even going to be living here at this time next year. And this town? It's never going to be home. I understand small towns. It's never home unless you're born there. If you weren't born there, you're always going to be "new." I'm always going to be "new" and this is never going to be "home."
Home is always going to be in Pennsylvania. I spent the first eighteen years of my life living in the same house in the same environment with the same people and that is always going to be home, and I am NEVER going to feel comfortable in my own home.
And that's just the way it is.
Friday night after work I didn't hang out with Bevan. He just drove me right home after I helped him close up the bar. I guess that's how it's going to go now. I'm some girl from work that talks to him and does his work for him so he can go home sooner. He's just a nice guy who gives rides to the girl who can't drive; he's just a nice guy who's friendly to the resident crippled girl, poor thing with no friends.
It wasn't like that a few weeks ago.
Now it is.
Cause his girlfriend is home now.
It's not like I didn't see that one coming. And here is how I've sorted it all out in my head: if he saw me as simply a friend, or someone he was simply friendly with, when Jury came back from college nothing would have changed, because I was only a friend. If our friendship was starting to go in other directions, which it really, really felt like it was, well, then he would stop being so friendly with me and start avoiding me once she arrived. And that's what happened.
Which is really... better, anyway, because... I only ever wanted a friend in the first place. If we can't just be friends then I don't even want to go there.
So I've pretty much stopped going to the bar after work, more or less. It's kind of cool how people ask where I've been, cause that means they actually notice that I'm not there. But I'm kind of sick of going. If it can't be me and Bevan sitting on the barstools talking and drinking, I'm really not interested in going, it seems. I've been sick of finding someone to talk to and then them being so drunk they don't remember that we hung out the next day. I've been sick of people inviting me along and then not talking to me. I've been sick of the only thing people talking to me about is taking shots. Not to mention I've been pretty sick of getting rides home from people with dubious sobriety.
Obviously Bevan isn't going to be my beer buddy if he's got an actual girlfriend he could be spending time with.
BUT ANYWAY.
So Matt called me saying he was going home for the long weekend and I was invited, and I was like, seriously, Matt, you can't be thinking you're going to come all the way down here to pick me up? And he said no, but he could pick me up in Philly. And I was all for that, because I figured that would get me out of going to Erica's thing, cause I would be out of town. Then some things happened at work with shifts getting shifted around, and I'm going to work all day and all night on Monday but I had the weekend off. Which means I can't go to Erica's thing anyway, but also means because of my work hours that Matt really couldn't pick me up in Philly if I couldn't get there.
So... and Erica called me again to make sure I was really coming on Monday, and I was like, oh I can't, I've got to work, and blah blah blah now my friend has invited me to go to his family's picnic party this weekend but I've got no way to get there. She said she'd drive me to AC if her parents were cool with her taking the car - then talking again with Matt and saying how this beautiful girl keeps trying to hang out with me but I don't want to go to her picnic and can't anyway cause I have to work, blah blah blah, Matt said invite her along, and I was like, so who is driving us again?
I told Erica she was invited, you know, if she was interested, in going to a three-day-long pig roast with five kegs of beer way out in the boonies of central Pennsylvania, and I figured she's be like no, but she was like, sure! First she said she didn't think her parents would let her take the car, and then we started brainstorming about her taking my car, which is not registered, so either we'd drive it anyway (yeah right, with all the police out for the holiday?) or try to get it registered (impossible, everything's closed for the holiday) but then her parents I guess said she could go ahead and take the car for the weekend.
So it really happened. Erica and I drove all the way to Matt's family's place, and we spent yesterday and today hanging with Matt and his girlfriend and drinking beer and roasting a pig.
Which was... pretty awesome. Of course, just like last time, hanging out with Matt just makes me miss having friends even more. He includes me every time. I turn down a lot of his invites, if for no other reason than I have to work or I can't get to wherever he is, but he always invites me along. It's like I'm just on his list of automatic people to call whenever anything's going on. And that's awesome. I love that.
And so, you know, three and a half hour drive with Erica. Erica who, you know, I've only hung out with one time. Who I've only seen twice in my life, and once was in the supermarket. Erica loooooves to talk about herself, it seems, cause that's what she did for the entire drive. So I can see why she's so intent on hanging out with me - I like to listen to other people's shit. Kinda why I like livejournal so much. I find other people's ordinary lives really interesting.
So now I know pretty much everything there is to know about Erica.
And part of me wonders, where the heck are all her friends, anyway? Don't people all re-connect with their high school friends when they come home from college? She said they're all not around anymore, but that is starting to sound a little odd to me. I dunno - she's so beautiful, I mean, when Matt met her, he was like, whoa, and you know, beautiful people are usually surrounded by other people. Everyone loves beautiful people. So, really? She really doesn't have any friends in town? That's just... weird.
And of course Matt made all these sidelong comments the whole time about me and Erica needing alone time, or whatever, and I had to keep being like, no Matt, just... no. She's not my "date" to your picnic. She's just a friend. She just happens to look like a supermodel.
And... before this starts to sound too far fetched... by "looks like a supermodel" I mean that she is very striking. She's very tall, she's probably over six feet with heels, and she seems to always wear heels. She has long hair that's reddish-brown and black, and she always styles it, and she wears make-up like she thinks she's about to be filmed or something. And she wears the huge movie-star sunglasses and carries a big metallic purse - so, I dunno what she looks like when she's wearing sweats and no make-up and hasn't brushed her hair, but I bet you I wouldn't recognize her.
So, what do you do when you're somewhere so far out in the middle of nowhere that there is nothing to do? Hey, when we were teenagers, Matt and I used to steal construction cones and stuff for fun. That's the kind of stuff you do. Or, you hope the weather is nice, and go be reckless with your car or your truck. Or, you drink. Or, you go down to the quarries and jump off the rocks into the water, if you are a particular brand of stupid. Or you get high. Or you sit around with your friends and talk about getting the hell out of there. That's what you do.
And it was weird going "home." There's a certain point on the Pennsylvania Turnpike where some part of me always goes, "ah, I'm back," even though I'm an hour or so away still. Everything's just so... green. And... quiet. And not... trashy and flat and ugly and nasty-smelling like it is here. Of course, Erica said it smelled like cow shit... I couldn't smell it, but perhaps I've been conditioned not to. I mean... I can't deny that there was probably cow shit in the fields, you know, fertilizer... and driving there we passed all my old "spots" and I felt kinda like a tour guide, like, "oh, I used to hang out there, and oh, that used to be a cool place to go" and so on.
We didn't go past my parents' house, but we kinda passed by the edge of my neighborhood. I was kinda dubious about going to begin with, but Matt was like, it's just my family. They know you, they have no problem with you, you're not going to run into anyone you don't want to see, chill out. And it was true. I didn't run into anyone I didn't expect to see. But the whole drive there I kinda had this fear in the back of my head that I'd pass my mom driving or something. We stopped for gas and I didn't want to get out of the car and go inside for a coffee because of the very, very slight possibility that my mom might be getting gas there too.
The three of us stayed up pretty much all night turning the pig, or, rather, Matt and Erica turned the pig because everyone else fell asleep. They've got it down to a science, Matt's family. They pass around a timer that goes off reminding whoever is on pig duty to turn it. I dunno, eventually I fell asleep, around like six or so, and I know Matt stayed up until almost nine am cause he was still awake and had the timer when I woke up again.
So, we... played poker. We drank a lot of beer and ate a lot of picnic food. There are a lot of kids in Matt's family (I'm talking like his whole entire family here, there were like fifty people there for the weekend) and I played with the kids some, we swang on the swings and colored on the tablecloth and made home made ice cream and played with water balloons and super soakers and eventually, the hose.
Yes. Yes, I am a big kid. Thanks for noticing. It was a lot of fun. Kids always like me. Matt always makes fun of me (I've been to his family's big parties like this tons of times) cause whenever he can't find me I always seem to turn up at the kid's table, lol.
We also went for a drive... on the bikes! His family has a lot of motorcycles and stuff, and me and him and Erica and his girlfriend went for a drive yesterday afternoon in the gorgeous weather and it was really, really awesome, I love riding on the back of a motorcycle. It's like riding on a roller coaster only even more exciting cause, you know, you can crash. Erica kept saying how pretty and peaceful it was out there and why would anyone ever want to leave, and Matt and I were just like 0.o cause there's nothing here? And she was like yeah but at least it's not New Jersey. Couldn't really argue with that one.
And I felt more "at home" this weekend than I have in a long, long time. I wasn't really expecting to. I never expect to. It's just something that hits me every I go back or something, this level of being comfortable that I seem to forget I can even get to, that I don't even remember exists until I go back again.
And I think a lot of my feeling so comfortable was just how "normal" I felt for the weekend. I mean, yeah, there is a certain level of "more normal" that I feel when I'm, oh, I don't know, sitting on the grass or something, like I've got this secret, that casual passer-bys don't know I can't walk cause, hey, I'm sitting on the grass. Yeah, I do feel like that sometime, like I'm briefly unremarkable, but that's not what it was, cause it was just Matt's family and they've seen me plenty of times and I sure wasn't fooling any of them. It was more like there was no need to fool anyone in the first place, cause they were all people from "home."
I did, though, feel like I was "fooling" anyone who drove by us while we were driving out to the river on the bikes. Which is and is not a good feeling. I don't really know how to explain that one. Maybe it's that while I like the idea, I also dislike the fact that I feel like it's a good thing to want to hide something about myself in the first place, especially something that I can never change and isn't really something to be ashamed of in the first place.
But that's not really what I wanted to get into, so, whatever. I had a really good time. Erica had a really good time, although she kind of makes me nervous, I mean, usually people don't want that badly to be friends with me that they'll take a three and a half hour drive with me to hang out with a family they've never met just because I said I wished I could go... it's just a little odd. Maybe I'm just being paranoid or something, but something about her just isn't sitting right with me.
She's here at my house right now, also, taking a shower. Matt and Emily are here too - they followed us back and are sleeping over here and are going to spend tomorrow being all romantic on the beach or something. I invited them back with me if they were interested, although, I mean, it's freakin' Memorial Day weekend and crowded as shit here. They're out on the beach or the boardwalk or something right now, but I'm sure when everything shuts down they'll be back here to drink or something.
Erica said she would stay over tonight and drive me to work tomorrow morning, and then that if I called her when I get off work tomorrow night she'd come pick me up and bring me to her family's thing, which I've been pretty much spending the entire week trying not to go to. And I still don't want to go. I still won't know anyone there. All the reasons I didn't want to go are still true, and besides now I feel like I might get interrogated by her parents or something, since, you know, she did take their car all weekend to go off to PA with me, who they've not only never met but never heard a thing about. But then again, she's a grown up, maybe they don't care one way or the other who she hangs around with.
I tried to talk to Matt about feeling uneasy about her, but he doesn't see it at all. He thinks she's awesome, cause she's a little like me in that she doesn't like to be out-drank, but she can hold a lot more alcohol than I can (hey, she is taller and stuff) so her and him stayed up going shot for shot last night long after I dropped out of that game. I love Matt, but sometimes I feel like he's a little too accepting. I mean, okay, she can drink, so automatically she's a-okay?
Well, I'm the one who randomly walked up to her in the diner and started acting like a goofball asshole. So really, if there's anything odd going on (outside of my own imaginings) I did start it.
So, totally unplanned, but we've all ended up here in my house. Which I did explain to Erica, I guess I didn't really last time she was here, that it looks the way it does because I'm trying to fix it up, because when I got it it was pretty much falling right down, and I don't have much furniture because all I do is move around, and see, I don't live upstairs anymore cause I already moved on from there. I wanted to show her the upstairs all fixed up, furnished and nice-looking to prove to her that really, I don't live in a total trash-hole, but, like, it's Memorial Day. I've got renters up there. I am about to have a serious cash flow that's gonna last all summer.
I need to put a lid on my spending urges before they start. I need that money for other things besides my own amusement.
But that is also getting into stuff I don't want to get into.
I'm back at my own house and it sure as hell doesn't feel like home and I don't know why I ever thought it did.
Matt's leaving tomorrow afternoon. I miss having real friends. I really, really do. I hate being here. When I've got everything all settled with this house, I'm leaving. I don't know where I want to go, exactly, but if I hate it here, there's really no reason to stay, now is there?
It doesn't. It feels like I live here. But it's not home. It's never going to be home. I don't know why I ever thought that. I'm not even going to be living here at this time next year. And this town? It's never going to be home. I understand small towns. It's never home unless you're born there. If you weren't born there, you're always going to be "new." I'm always going to be "new" and this is never going to be "home."
Home is always going to be in Pennsylvania. I spent the first eighteen years of my life living in the same house in the same environment with the same people and that is always going to be home, and I am NEVER going to feel comfortable in my own home.
And that's just the way it is.
Friday night after work I didn't hang out with Bevan. He just drove me right home after I helped him close up the bar. I guess that's how it's going to go now. I'm some girl from work that talks to him and does his work for him so he can go home sooner. He's just a nice guy who gives rides to the girl who can't drive; he's just a nice guy who's friendly to the resident crippled girl, poor thing with no friends.
It wasn't like that a few weeks ago.
Now it is.
Cause his girlfriend is home now.
It's not like I didn't see that one coming. And here is how I've sorted it all out in my head: if he saw me as simply a friend, or someone he was simply friendly with, when Jury came back from college nothing would have changed, because I was only a friend. If our friendship was starting to go in other directions, which it really, really felt like it was, well, then he would stop being so friendly with me and start avoiding me once she arrived. And that's what happened.
Which is really... better, anyway, because... I only ever wanted a friend in the first place. If we can't just be friends then I don't even want to go there.
So I've pretty much stopped going to the bar after work, more or less. It's kind of cool how people ask where I've been, cause that means they actually notice that I'm not there. But I'm kind of sick of going. If it can't be me and Bevan sitting on the barstools talking and drinking, I'm really not interested in going, it seems. I've been sick of finding someone to talk to and then them being so drunk they don't remember that we hung out the next day. I've been sick of people inviting me along and then not talking to me. I've been sick of the only thing people talking to me about is taking shots. Not to mention I've been pretty sick of getting rides home from people with dubious sobriety.
Obviously Bevan isn't going to be my beer buddy if he's got an actual girlfriend he could be spending time with.
BUT ANYWAY.
So Matt called me saying he was going home for the long weekend and I was invited, and I was like, seriously, Matt, you can't be thinking you're going to come all the way down here to pick me up? And he said no, but he could pick me up in Philly. And I was all for that, because I figured that would get me out of going to Erica's thing, cause I would be out of town. Then some things happened at work with shifts getting shifted around, and I'm going to work all day and all night on Monday but I had the weekend off. Which means I can't go to Erica's thing anyway, but also means because of my work hours that Matt really couldn't pick me up in Philly if I couldn't get there.
So... and Erica called me again to make sure I was really coming on Monday, and I was like, oh I can't, I've got to work, and blah blah blah now my friend has invited me to go to his family's picnic party this weekend but I've got no way to get there. She said she'd drive me to AC if her parents were cool with her taking the car - then talking again with Matt and saying how this beautiful girl keeps trying to hang out with me but I don't want to go to her picnic and can't anyway cause I have to work, blah blah blah, Matt said invite her along, and I was like, so who is driving us again?
I told Erica she was invited, you know, if she was interested, in going to a three-day-long pig roast with five kegs of beer way out in the boonies of central Pennsylvania, and I figured she's be like no, but she was like, sure! First she said she didn't think her parents would let her take the car, and then we started brainstorming about her taking my car, which is not registered, so either we'd drive it anyway (yeah right, with all the police out for the holiday?) or try to get it registered (impossible, everything's closed for the holiday) but then her parents I guess said she could go ahead and take the car for the weekend.
So it really happened. Erica and I drove all the way to Matt's family's place, and we spent yesterday and today hanging with Matt and his girlfriend and drinking beer and roasting a pig.
Which was... pretty awesome. Of course, just like last time, hanging out with Matt just makes me miss having friends even more. He includes me every time. I turn down a lot of his invites, if for no other reason than I have to work or I can't get to wherever he is, but he always invites me along. It's like I'm just on his list of automatic people to call whenever anything's going on. And that's awesome. I love that.
And so, you know, three and a half hour drive with Erica. Erica who, you know, I've only hung out with one time. Who I've only seen twice in my life, and once was in the supermarket. Erica loooooves to talk about herself, it seems, cause that's what she did for the entire drive. So I can see why she's so intent on hanging out with me - I like to listen to other people's shit. Kinda why I like livejournal so much. I find other people's ordinary lives really interesting.
So now I know pretty much everything there is to know about Erica.
And part of me wonders, where the heck are all her friends, anyway? Don't people all re-connect with their high school friends when they come home from college? She said they're all not around anymore, but that is starting to sound a little odd to me. I dunno - she's so beautiful, I mean, when Matt met her, he was like, whoa, and you know, beautiful people are usually surrounded by other people. Everyone loves beautiful people. So, really? She really doesn't have any friends in town? That's just... weird.
And of course Matt made all these sidelong comments the whole time about me and Erica needing alone time, or whatever, and I had to keep being like, no Matt, just... no. She's not my "date" to your picnic. She's just a friend. She just happens to look like a supermodel.
And... before this starts to sound too far fetched... by "looks like a supermodel" I mean that she is very striking. She's very tall, she's probably over six feet with heels, and she seems to always wear heels. She has long hair that's reddish-brown and black, and she always styles it, and she wears make-up like she thinks she's about to be filmed or something. And she wears the huge movie-star sunglasses and carries a big metallic purse - so, I dunno what she looks like when she's wearing sweats and no make-up and hasn't brushed her hair, but I bet you I wouldn't recognize her.
So, what do you do when you're somewhere so far out in the middle of nowhere that there is nothing to do? Hey, when we were teenagers, Matt and I used to steal construction cones and stuff for fun. That's the kind of stuff you do. Or, you hope the weather is nice, and go be reckless with your car or your truck. Or, you drink. Or, you go down to the quarries and jump off the rocks into the water, if you are a particular brand of stupid. Or you get high. Or you sit around with your friends and talk about getting the hell out of there. That's what you do.
And it was weird going "home." There's a certain point on the Pennsylvania Turnpike where some part of me always goes, "ah, I'm back," even though I'm an hour or so away still. Everything's just so... green. And... quiet. And not... trashy and flat and ugly and nasty-smelling like it is here. Of course, Erica said it smelled like cow shit... I couldn't smell it, but perhaps I've been conditioned not to. I mean... I can't deny that there was probably cow shit in the fields, you know, fertilizer... and driving there we passed all my old "spots" and I felt kinda like a tour guide, like, "oh, I used to hang out there, and oh, that used to be a cool place to go" and so on.
We didn't go past my parents' house, but we kinda passed by the edge of my neighborhood. I was kinda dubious about going to begin with, but Matt was like, it's just my family. They know you, they have no problem with you, you're not going to run into anyone you don't want to see, chill out. And it was true. I didn't run into anyone I didn't expect to see. But the whole drive there I kinda had this fear in the back of my head that I'd pass my mom driving or something. We stopped for gas and I didn't want to get out of the car and go inside for a coffee because of the very, very slight possibility that my mom might be getting gas there too.
The three of us stayed up pretty much all night turning the pig, or, rather, Matt and Erica turned the pig because everyone else fell asleep. They've got it down to a science, Matt's family. They pass around a timer that goes off reminding whoever is on pig duty to turn it. I dunno, eventually I fell asleep, around like six or so, and I know Matt stayed up until almost nine am cause he was still awake and had the timer when I woke up again.
So, we... played poker. We drank a lot of beer and ate a lot of picnic food. There are a lot of kids in Matt's family (I'm talking like his whole entire family here, there were like fifty people there for the weekend) and I played with the kids some, we swang on the swings and colored on the tablecloth and made home made ice cream and played with water balloons and super soakers and eventually, the hose.
Yes. Yes, I am a big kid. Thanks for noticing. It was a lot of fun. Kids always like me. Matt always makes fun of me (I've been to his family's big parties like this tons of times) cause whenever he can't find me I always seem to turn up at the kid's table, lol.
We also went for a drive... on the bikes! His family has a lot of motorcycles and stuff, and me and him and Erica and his girlfriend went for a drive yesterday afternoon in the gorgeous weather and it was really, really awesome, I love riding on the back of a motorcycle. It's like riding on a roller coaster only even more exciting cause, you know, you can crash. Erica kept saying how pretty and peaceful it was out there and why would anyone ever want to leave, and Matt and I were just like 0.o cause there's nothing here? And she was like yeah but at least it's not New Jersey. Couldn't really argue with that one.
And I felt more "at home" this weekend than I have in a long, long time. I wasn't really expecting to. I never expect to. It's just something that hits me every I go back or something, this level of being comfortable that I seem to forget I can even get to, that I don't even remember exists until I go back again.
And I think a lot of my feeling so comfortable was just how "normal" I felt for the weekend. I mean, yeah, there is a certain level of "more normal" that I feel when I'm, oh, I don't know, sitting on the grass or something, like I've got this secret, that casual passer-bys don't know I can't walk cause, hey, I'm sitting on the grass. Yeah, I do feel like that sometime, like I'm briefly unremarkable, but that's not what it was, cause it was just Matt's family and they've seen me plenty of times and I sure wasn't fooling any of them. It was more like there was no need to fool anyone in the first place, cause they were all people from "home."
I did, though, feel like I was "fooling" anyone who drove by us while we were driving out to the river on the bikes. Which is and is not a good feeling. I don't really know how to explain that one. Maybe it's that while I like the idea, I also dislike the fact that I feel like it's a good thing to want to hide something about myself in the first place, especially something that I can never change and isn't really something to be ashamed of in the first place.
But that's not really what I wanted to get into, so, whatever. I had a really good time. Erica had a really good time, although she kind of makes me nervous, I mean, usually people don't want that badly to be friends with me that they'll take a three and a half hour drive with me to hang out with a family they've never met just because I said I wished I could go... it's just a little odd. Maybe I'm just being paranoid or something, but something about her just isn't sitting right with me.
She's here at my house right now, also, taking a shower. Matt and Emily are here too - they followed us back and are sleeping over here and are going to spend tomorrow being all romantic on the beach or something. I invited them back with me if they were interested, although, I mean, it's freakin' Memorial Day weekend and crowded as shit here. They're out on the beach or the boardwalk or something right now, but I'm sure when everything shuts down they'll be back here to drink or something.
Erica said she would stay over tonight and drive me to work tomorrow morning, and then that if I called her when I get off work tomorrow night she'd come pick me up and bring me to her family's thing, which I've been pretty much spending the entire week trying not to go to. And I still don't want to go. I still won't know anyone there. All the reasons I didn't want to go are still true, and besides now I feel like I might get interrogated by her parents or something, since, you know, she did take their car all weekend to go off to PA with me, who they've not only never met but never heard a thing about. But then again, she's a grown up, maybe they don't care one way or the other who she hangs around with.
I tried to talk to Matt about feeling uneasy about her, but he doesn't see it at all. He thinks she's awesome, cause she's a little like me in that she doesn't like to be out-drank, but she can hold a lot more alcohol than I can (hey, she is taller and stuff) so her and him stayed up going shot for shot last night long after I dropped out of that game. I love Matt, but sometimes I feel like he's a little too accepting. I mean, okay, she can drink, so automatically she's a-okay?
Well, I'm the one who randomly walked up to her in the diner and started acting like a goofball asshole. So really, if there's anything odd going on (outside of my own imaginings) I did start it.
So, totally unplanned, but we've all ended up here in my house. Which I did explain to Erica, I guess I didn't really last time she was here, that it looks the way it does because I'm trying to fix it up, because when I got it it was pretty much falling right down, and I don't have much furniture because all I do is move around, and see, I don't live upstairs anymore cause I already moved on from there. I wanted to show her the upstairs all fixed up, furnished and nice-looking to prove to her that really, I don't live in a total trash-hole, but, like, it's Memorial Day. I've got renters up there. I am about to have a serious cash flow that's gonna last all summer.
I need to put a lid on my spending urges before they start. I need that money for other things besides my own amusement.
But that is also getting into stuff I don't want to get into.
I'm back at my own house and it sure as hell doesn't feel like home and I don't know why I ever thought it did.
Matt's leaving tomorrow afternoon. I miss having real friends. I really, really do. I hate being here. When I've got everything all settled with this house, I'm leaving. I don't know where I want to go, exactly, but if I hate it here, there's really no reason to stay, now is there?
