going home

i think i have decided to move back to my home town. to say this inspires a plethora of responses from friends and acquaintances, and the response tends to tell me a lot about the person who offers it. it's interesting the way people think about their home towns. some people immediately interpret this as a bad thing, the kind of thing one would only do in order to care for a dying parent or kick a nasty crack habit. some people clearly wouldn't even do it for either of those reasons. when i told karol of my plan, she noted that she would put her cigarette out in her eye before she would move back to laramie. i think at one time i told sara that i would rather stab myself in the face than move back to grand forks. the new truth is that it really makes a lot of sense for me to move back. it's where the love is. it's where i feel connected. it's where the people who will kick my ass to move on with my life will have the greatest access to me and my ass. it's home. what can i say?

i am trying to look at the whole situation not as a return in shame and failure kind of deal, although if my compassionate reader wants to view it this way, i won't deny that it is a legitimate interpretation. i prefer to see it as a logical place to make a repeat attempt at launching into something a little more hopeful, a little more intentional. i will have the space and the support and the resources to finally complete my graduate degree and participate in the graduation ceremony that i should have walked through five years ago. i will be able, better and more obviously anyway, to take my life off of "hold" and do the things that have been tucked away under fear and avoidance for so long.

this is a good thing. unless one compares it to a move to, say, NYC or san diego. then it's not such a good thing. so let's not do that.