A Kind of Homecoming

It’s very strange to me that, in the midst of one of my worst periods of mental health, I’d find myself back in a place that probably had a big impact on my shit mental health in the first place. Moving back to my beloved Delaware, to an apartment complex my family lived in when I was 4 or 5. I remember living here in a general sense (albeit in a different building), but nearly all my memories of that time are of watching my parents fight like animals. Well, not my mom. She didn’t really fight back because she couldn’t. How do you fend off a monster? I remember being terrified and panicked, crying in the dark, and never wanting to feel that way again. That’s no way for a child to grow up, not if they have any hope of being a stable adult one day.

But now, 40 years on, broken and definitely not stable, I’m back in this same spot. This apartment is a mirror-image of the one from years ago, but the same basic layout. From my bedroom window, I can see the building where so many horrible things happened and twisted my brain. The longer I’m here, the more bits and pieces I can recall. I should be in blind panic, fight-or-flight, ready to cry in the dark. And yet…

There’s a lifetime between me then and me now. The sharpest edges of all that hurt have been smoothed over by time and experience. It’s all still there, of course, with more added on top, but it’s less abrasive somehow. I am still so hurt, broken, and lost, but there’s something about being here now that feels like a redo. Except this time, there isn’t a drunken, screaming animal throwing punches and bodies down the hallway. There’s no fear that if I say or do the wrong thing (never knowing what things would be wrong on any given day) I’d incur the wrath of the animal myself. It’s me, my mom, and our cats. It’s not perfect, but it’s peaceful. And it’s giving me time and space to clear my mind. And revelations like this are a positive sign.

I’m not where I’d hoped I’d be at this point in my life, but I think I’m where I needed to be