![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hometown Memories
Dec. 27th, 2024 10:24 pmOur husband is visiting family at the moment, near where we grew up (he happened to live nearby when we still lived with our parents) and I've briefly been thinking about the past and present
Here and now, his wife is sitting in their apartment hundreds of miles away, hanging out with friends and beloveds, watching a movie, playing a game, typing up a short post about how she feels to share with a shocking number of internet strangers (insert Patrick Star "Who Are You People" meme here), and my husband is driving past my hometown on his way to dinner with his family, in his childhood home sorting plushies, beginning to erase his presence in their house for good
But also there is a young man, an egg in triplicate, driving nervously to his girlfriend's house for the first time, and a young woman, equally nervous, excited to spend some time alone with him. Their roles are also reversed, with the young man's parents away and him pacing anxiously and awaiting her arrival. Later they'll watch anime and cuddle and agree that his room is uninhabitable, but they'll inhabit it anyway because they are close and that matters more
They are at work, thinking of each other, they are at school, distracted and excited for the other's messages, they are together and apart in hundreds and thousands of moments in those places we no longer inhabit. We have known each other for over 10 years, and there are so, so many of us in those places, getting ice cream, going for walks, kissing, driving, working, playing, loving
I don't miss those times. Our parents house is poisonous now, dragging us back into old habits and bad memories, and we are in a much better place in...just about every possible way. But those moments are mine and important and old and there and so none of us will really leave those places, because the other is still there, a little
Time is weird. Memory is weirder.
Here and now, his wife is sitting in their apartment hundreds of miles away, hanging out with friends and beloveds, watching a movie, playing a game, typing up a short post about how she feels to share with a shocking number of internet strangers (insert Patrick Star "Who Are You People" meme here), and my husband is driving past my hometown on his way to dinner with his family, in his childhood home sorting plushies, beginning to erase his presence in their house for good
But also there is a young man, an egg in triplicate, driving nervously to his girlfriend's house for the first time, and a young woman, equally nervous, excited to spend some time alone with him. Their roles are also reversed, with the young man's parents away and him pacing anxiously and awaiting her arrival. Later they'll watch anime and cuddle and agree that his room is uninhabitable, but they'll inhabit it anyway because they are close and that matters more
They are at work, thinking of each other, they are at school, distracted and excited for the other's messages, they are together and apart in hundreds and thousands of moments in those places we no longer inhabit. We have known each other for over 10 years, and there are so, so many of us in those places, getting ice cream, going for walks, kissing, driving, working, playing, loving
I don't miss those times. Our parents house is poisonous now, dragging us back into old habits and bad memories, and we are in a much better place in...just about every possible way. But those moments are mine and important and old and there and so none of us will really leave those places, because the other is still there, a little
Time is weird. Memory is weirder.
