You can't go back home, home isn't there anymore

Those were the words written in a reading I had for class.  It seems to be something of a theme for my week...let me explain

• The devil/doubt (one in the same in my opinion) nearly got the best of me.  I went out to eat with Ri Ri and she asked me "Why are you not with P2AD? Clearly you're in love with him."  I hear this often so I don't really ever pay any mind to it and I answer with all the standard reasons and move on.  That day though, I couldn't.  The question stayed with me like it was the first time it had ever been posed.  The next day I woke up asking myself for reasons.  What I came up with was that while I could very well trust him with my heart, I have no desire to.  And why? He already broke it once.  I was watching FRIENDS the day I was marinating on the answer to Ri Ri's question and it was the Ross and Rachel break up.  Rachel said to Ross, " I can't. You're a totally different person to me now. I used to think of you as someone who would never ever hurt me.  Ever...and it doesn't matter what you say or what you do, its just changed."  Nail on head. I cried for the next three hours.  I texted my Person and told her I was tired of thinking something was wrong with me, why do I suck at men?  P2AD, Deeds, My dad, my step-dad...E. All severely severed relationships with men that I, for way too long, took personally.  Something has had to be wrong with me because they all left.  They all hurt me and they all left.  I suppose that when I love someone, I do so without borders or boundaries (or that is my preference) but with men I don't allow myself to.  I even wondered how much I loved Deeds.  I think the first time I caught him flirting with another girl it likely should have been over because I was at bay  everyday after that.  Trying to convince myself otherwise.  Then back to P2AD, sure I forgive him but my Person says I need to forgive myself; why? Ri Ri asked.  I need to forgive myself for loving, trusting, and it simply not working out.  Not because something is wrong with me, or even him, but just because it didn't.  I don't have to go back to that place of feeling hurt and abandoned and break down in tears, I don't have to feel that weakness anymore because that place doesn't hold anything else for me anymore.  It was perhaps the best thing that my Person could have said to me in her message that read, " I know this may sound crazy, but I just had the thought that this was the devil at work in your life cause you've reached a place where you're appreciating yourself and being appreciated by others in your class and such, but yet there is this self doubt nagging in the back of your mind."  Thank you.  Thank you because you're absolutely right.  I am so uncomfortable with praise because on some level I still feel undeserving, though I'm getting better.  It's not me, its Him and I need to be okay acknowledging His greatness in myself.  So, why am I not with P2AD? Well...you can't go home again.
• In a separate conversation with my Person we discussed friendships.  In particular how we are in this place in our lives where so many of our peers are married or single (the extremes of these two dichotomies) and we feel somewhere in between.  Person noted how she didn't necessarily want a husband, it wasn't about a man, it was about company.  We've grown to love and appreciate close, intimate relationships and now that we're in these new places in our lives both literally and figuratively, we don't have those things.  We long for Knoxville.  Only, even going back there isn't the same because everyone we know has gone and moved away.  It's not the place.  It's what it used to hold.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it this brokenness inside me might start healing. Out here its like I'm someone else, I thought that maybe I could find myself if I could just come in I swear I'll leave, won't take nothing but a memory from the house that built me.

• That's the thing...it built us we've moved on and we're uncomfortable and there's no one there to hold our hands or tell us its okay, suddenly we have to be the ones to tell ourselves that.  I hate it.  I miss Jennie. Kendra. Artieka. Tre.  I miss laying in bed curled up with them talking about the good the bad the dramatic.  But I am trying to build with Fenway, and CR. I'm trying to open up and trust in new friendships, though they will never ever replace my best friends.  Even with certain friends from Knoxville or even before college, I had to stop forcing it. I had to accept our friendships for what they are now.  You can't go back.
• Where is home now? Wherever I might be.  Wherever the heart is, right? Isn't that how the saying goes?  Where is my heart.  Its with my family, its with my friends.  Its all over, so I guess there's no reason to move in rewind because presently, I am just fine.  I'm in this great place of discovery and while this week was a hard one in which I had to look at my past and I had to explore some hurt I did it so that it couldn't hurt me again.  I had to "go back" so that whenever the memory crosses my mind gain it will not hold power over me.  That's healing, yeah? I guess what I learned is that you can't  be afraid to hurt.  Because then you live a life filed with limits and caution.  I don't want to be that way, I'm much to reckless and carefree to ever want to be held back by being afraid to get hurt.  I think that's what bothered me so much about analyzing my relationships with men.  I do fear getting hurt, but what of it?  I've survived it...not just once either, multiple times, and I am okay.  Better than okay, I am thriving.  I had to give in to that hurt.  I had to cry and I had to ask myself the question that I feared crossing my lips. I had to hear the doubt before I could be certain. And now I feel so much better for it.  It smells like that first minute after the rain has stopped.  You still see the steam rising from the cold precipitation hitting the hot ground.  The clouds remnants are still thick in the sky though they've given their best to break the earth.  But the sun is coming, and it will come every day.  That is worth smiling about.  That is worth standing in the rain, sunrises.  That is worth everything.  Home.  Home is where the sunshines (Son shines).