this blog began as a section on my site called “Infinite Diarrhea” which I took down very shortly after starting it because … people were reading it. This, in turn, was causing problems in my already failing marriage …
I’m homesick.
I know: "how on earth can you be homesick when you’re sitting at home?" But, dammit, I’m homesick.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve no friends nearby to hang with on a regular basis, maybe it’s that I wear myself like a wedding ring, maybe it’s the bourbon – I don’t know, but I’m homesick, dammit.
What is it about childhood that makes so many of us want to go back to it?
Jesus, I was an uncomfortable kid once I started to figure reality out – always frightened, always pensive, trying to work shit out, to get along, to get comfortable in my own skin (just like today) – but I look back and, damn if the memories don’t make me feel homesick.
That uneasiness of childhood, all the doubts, fears and unknowns, were to be erased by the mythical and ever far distant act of morphing into an adult. And here I sit, balding, bills, and bitchy yet just as lost internally as when I was 7.
Okay, maybe not so lost.
Now I find it a little easier to say (or at least think) ‘fuck off’ to those who deserve it, to no longer look up to my elders without first taking good stock of their character, to realize that the guy sitting next to me on the bus, despite his fancy watch and expensive cologne fumes, is likely just as wide-eyed and butterfly-bellied as I, internally, if not more so (thus the watch and cologne).
As a kid, however, there was always, as mentioned before, the thought that, once I’d crossed over from toddler to adult, from grade-schooler to adult, from teenager to adult, from young man to adult, that all the questions would be answered, all the doubts erased, all fears expunged. Hah!
No wonder I pine for my childhood, no wonder I feel homesick – adults suffer from the knowledge that the big difference between childhood and adulthood isn’t the height, money, responsibilities, or confidence but the shattering of illusions, the sheer lack of hope or faith in the future.
Gads, I’m homesick . . .
