Since I have moved from metropolitan Maryland and have driven the 1,000 miles (968 miles to be exact), I've noticed that the area of Missouri I have resided in contains only three things: gas stations, all night diners, and meth labs.
I have never in my life felt the pain of homesickness. Well, no I lied, actually once when I moved out of my house at 18 because my parents told me I couldn't. I lasted a month? Maybe two. But that was of course different. I was about 2 miles away from my house when I moved at that time and now I'm 18 hours away. Hell, a couple days ago I cried the hardest I ever had in my life. I always thought that I would have been fine away from home ( because I love change and variety in my life) but come to think of it, I probably don't seeing as how I'm almost always in tears, or throwing things in our house in a fit of rage, or just staring at all four white walls feeling nothing at all.
I guess this is turning into a sort of rant-at-the-world-oh-pity-me kind of entry.
But really, I love to drive and always have. It was actually something I was well-known for back in Frederick; kidnapping people in my red Pontiac chariot and giving them tours of the many back roads of the greater Maryland/Virginia area. Now, I don't even have a job to make money to afford to drive around like that anymore. It's making me stir crazy. I feel like Jack Nicholson out of The Shining.
After all of this, I've learned something about myself. Instead of craving lots of change and variety, I cling to what I'm used to, what I've always known, to "normalcy" if you wanna call it that. I was born and raised in Frederick, Maryland and thought that I would never leave (and I was actually okay with that). Of course I wanted to travel and I love to travel. However, I've always noticed that after about a week of being somewhere "new", I couldn't wait to fly home, look down at the Baltimore city lit up and alive, watching everyone drive like maniacs on the way home, having the smell of my home waft around me, and curling up with my cat, Gizmo, on my bed. She always smelled like rain to me.
The almost 3 months I've been in bum-fuck-nowhere Missouri, I've realized that I took my old home for granted sometimes. I've started kicking myself for every invitation out to a movie or lunch I turned down, or DJ-ing at a party that I didn't feel like doing, or just being OUT more instead of locking myself away in my basement (I did this for the last few months I was in Maryland. I guess I was scared). I remember the night before I was supposed to move trying to runaway in my little red car in the middle of an ice storm with a quarter tank of gas left and no idea where I was going to runaway TO. I was kind of high off of a mixture of pot and mushrooms and had cuts all up my left arm crying in a weird sort of numb dreamlike state and wishing I were dead.
Even now, I wish I wouldn't have made the move but then again I would have kicked myself for not taking the risk and regretting "what could have been".
