Disquiet

I’ve been trying to go to sleep for the last hour; trying to keep on some sort of schedule while on break so I don’t die next Monday morning.

But the disquiet in my head, my heart won’t let me sleep. Too many thoughts are going around in my head, and they all focus back on one thought – home.

I have been invited back home to Alaska for a visit. One of my best friends from high school posted a silly comment on his Facebook, and I wrote back about how much I miss him. He wrote me back and he and my other best friend from high school offered to split the plane ticket cost with me for me to go visit.

I can afford it on my own actually – I’m at a place where that is possible. I will have that damned credit card paid off by summer so the trip would be possible…

How many times have I written about being homesick?

I was excited enough that I started looking at tickets, at car rentals, figuring out days and such, since they both work and what I could do during the day and figuring out weekend game nights. Thinking of hotels since they have pets I am deathly allergic to. Wondering if a favorite restaurant still serves the home-made corn-fritters that I miss and cannot recreate to save my life. Wondering if I could track down other friends and see them, visit places that I love.

And in the excitement I thought I would play with Google street view for the first time, and I looked up my house. I was confused because the view came in on a house I did not recognize – and than I realized that it was the house across the street, and they had done some MAJOR re-landscaping. Once I figured out the camera, I turned to ‘my’ house…

My parents bought the property in the early 80s, they had the house built – I grew up there. It is the only home I have ever known. And it looked the same. Whoever lives their now cut back the mass of honeysuckles that grew in the front covering the bay windows. But other than that it was ‘my’ home.

Then I started looking at my street, and my old neighbors were STILL there with their stupid old cars that they will ever get rid of. I could feel the tears building behind my eyes, and I used the stupid street view to take old roads that were once gravel paths which are now paved. I knew the meadow I loved so much as a child was gone, but today I saw the proof. The paths my father, brother and I built are gone. The skiing hill and the foxes swamp, all gone, Everything about the neighborhood is different.

Then still playing with street viewer I went to “down town” of where I grew up, and I found most of the old buildings, surrounded by a hell of a lot of things I don’t recognized. But I knew street names, and I know if you took roads towards Lazy Mountain, it is possible to get to the old roads. And there I found what I remember – the wildness, the open and vast rivers and mountians. Hell I even found the reindeer farm.

And I sat here and sobbed.

The first time I wrote of being homesick was back in 2006: 5-27-06. Those feelings have not changed. Now it is 2011. The last time I was home was in 2001, and thinking about it now the emptiness just keeps growing.

I don’t even know how to give voice to all that is inside. I want to go home, but thanks to Google I know it’s really only in my head. Home is a memory, and I am still here. I am creating a life here, but it never feels like “home.”

Now that I spent and hour writing this and crying more to the point of headaches and dehydration, the real game will be waking up Obie and getting him to let me back into my bed. He’s not only stolen the bed, he’s on my pillows and turned my blankets into a nest. I wish I could sleep as easily as him.