Spring fever
You’ve heard this all before.Â
I’m home again, or am I? What’s home? Where my stuff is? Where my heart is? Where the mountains are, or with the lakes and trees and the sounds of my family all together, eating and laughing.
Sad to be home, glad to be home.
Fresno is green, much greener than Niles at the moment. It was so warm earlier that all the windows were open. I like the early spring, the early warmth.
At the home of my heart, it was mostly cold, cloudy, gray with the potential for life just peeking around the corner, teasing me. Fresno will become brown and dry, or golden as the state, in a couple months, while Niles will still be green, flourishing in the warm, moist weather.
Sometimes I think I spend too much time in the past, wading around in my own mind, revisiting the good and bad. Reconnecting with a lost friend recently also made me realize I’m so much different than I was years ago. For the better.
I need to let go of the past. I’m a happier person, more centered, more sure of who I am. My politics are radically different. My attitudes and goals are different. Underneath, there’s a core of Mel B. that won’t change.
But I’m not a little girl anymore. And I’m not a young, foolish, headstrong young woman anymore. I’m me, and I’m home wherever I am right now.
IÂ can stay in my old bedroom but it’s not mine anymore. I know that when I cook in the kitchen, I have to ask where stuff is, because I don’t belong there anymore. The shower no longer feels comfortable to me. I repack my clothes, and go back to where my stuff is. Fresno.
I look forward to seeing my unseen future. And seeing what the Mel B. of the future will think of the Mel B. of now. I wonder where I’ll be. I wonder if I’ll love the place I’m in then as home, or as a place to put my stuff. I wonder what I’ll think of my time in Fresno. Unless I’m still here.
Who knows? That’s half the fun. Now if my future self could just tell me whether it’s a good idea to buy right now, I’d be happy to hear from me.
Sounds like you’re in a good place mentally, despite the inevitable disorientation that comes with travelling home (and travelling back in the past a bit). I’m looking forward to knowing the Mel B. of the future too, and maybe we can make it out to California one of these years for a real visit.
Good to see you last week, to share a meal together and have a chance to chat.
I wonder: can we all expect another radical rewriting of who we are in the coming decades? I had a similar awakening as Mel B, as I suspect most people do. Actually, I’m curious if everyone here felt like the twenties were a time of immense personal and philosophical change…But I’m more curious if this happens more than once in a lifetime. Am I stuck with this particular version of Todd, version 2.0? Or will version 3.0 hit me somewhere in my mid 40’s? I suspect the latter would be known most colloquially as a mid-life crisis….but every crisis is an awakening, every death a birth of some sort.
Do we get 2.0, versus 3.0 based on our decades? I’m entering 3.0. What will 3.1 or 3.5 look like? More or less buggy?