The house that built me

I use to go home every year when my parents still lived in the house I grew up in.  After it was sold out from under me I still tried to get to Indiana even if I didn't get back to Evansville, the city I grew up in.  Eventually just getting to Indiana was enough.  There is just something about the midwest that calls to me.  In the summer, of course, as it doesn't call at all to me in the winter months.

I didn't get to Indiana last year because of my illness.  For some reason a year without Indiana was too much.  Then I heard Miranda Lambert sing, The House That Built Me, and I knew I needed to get home.  The lyrics in that song seemed to sum upthings I was feeling, but couldn't define.

You leave home, you move on,

You do the best you can.

I got lost in this whole world,

And forgot who I am.

It has been a tough year.  I've faced truths I hadn't wanted to see.  I've juggled motherhood and healthcare.  I've gone from anger to guilt and back again to anger.  I've had to come to terms with my mother's aging and her failing health.  I've watched my eldest daughter graduate middle school and take the next steps; steps I know will go quickly into a run that will lead to her eventually leaving.  I've thought more about the future and what it holds for me and where my place will be in it.  I've had days of deep depression where I haven't wanted to fight my way through it.  And I've wondered what happened to that person that was once me.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it,

This brokenness inside me might start healing.

Out here it's like I'm someone else,

I thought that maybe I could find myself.

I can't go back to what was once my home.  I just can't do it, and in wondering why the loss of that house caused me so much regret and sorrow, not to metnion all the nightly dreams, I realized that it was more about who I was, who I could still be, when I was there.  It didn't matter that I no longer lived there, that my home was now with the family I had created, it was still the place I could retreat to to meditate, to recharge my batteries and get back to that person that deep down inside I still knew was there.

I know they say you can't go home again

I just had to come back one last time

Ma'am, I know you don't know me from Adam

But these handprints on the front steps are mine

Someone else now lives in my old home.  I can't go there again, but I can go to Indiana.  It is where I grew up and where I became the woman and person that I am today.  I have a farm there.  I have family there.  I have me there, and every once in a while I plan to visit to reconnect with all of that.

If I could walk around, I swear I'll leave

Won't take nothing but a memory

From the house that built me.