Lubbock Abroad

At the end of the day I will have traveled 323 miles to arrive in my hometown. For the last two years, I have been living from place to place leaving portions of my possessions in rooms and cars and freezing good times and new friends within frames on my walls where ever I go. I have become a completely different person from who I was on the 6 am morning drive to Lubbock, TX in 2010.  I wouldn’t have exactly called that day the reclamation of self where I realized I didn’t have to be that girl I had always been, but it was the first 323 mile trip that got me closer.

I used to picture myself as a Hometown Glory. I fantasized the idea of always returning to the 10,000+ population as “exceeding expectations”. Exceeding expectations defined: Meeting all of the expectations people had for you based on your childhood achievements, but more polished. It’s like refurnished furniture; you expect it to be the same shape and have the same dimensions, but you know the color and use might change. That way of life, I eventually came to find, was inevitably going to cause a conflict between the needs of the “perfect society” of 10,000+ and my natural drive to be an individual.

Referencing Psalm 139, I know I was beautifully and wonderfully made; I was created to be me and not to meet or exceed anyone’s expectations.  The day I realized home is about your foundation and not about what you decide to build on top of it, was the day I reclaimed myself. 

Since that day, I have made many 323 mile trips to arrive home, where my heart is. The ability to realize my love for home had nothing to do with the 10,000+ people in it, the buildings, or the memories good or bad, was the day my family became a priority of my world. 

After today I will have traveled 323 miles to arrive to a place where many people meet my expectations with a little more polish than before. However, after today I will have traveled that 323 miles proud of who I am and hoping to not meet anybody’s expectations of me. Today I arrive to family who accepts me always; today I arrive home.

My Direction

The priorities of my world exist, really, in three categories: Love, family, and happiness. I care about other things too, naturally, such as being successful and having heaps of money, but society expects us to be achievers of those personal goals anyway. Everyone of course wants to meet their own terms of success, but I expect that answering to my priorities will lead to those societal expectations.

 All twenty year olds, of course, are stuck between looking at their future from an aspiring distance and facing reality as it is. For example, sometimes I like to see myself as on my way to having life figured out by next week as a result of my impeccable reflection skills, and other times I see myself as financially irresponsible as I eat oatmeal for every meal to save up some extra cash to pay my rent. Twenty is really the best age to be; you’re not only leaving the adolescent stages of immaturity and oblivion, but people understand when you only eat oatmeal and only do your laundry once a month. 

Thus, my priorities have some justification in my mind—it’s ok for me only to have three, because eventually I will get what I want out of life regardless of my age. But for now, I am in a really good place. I am happy, full and capable of love, and I have a family made up of relatives, friends, and everyone else that I meet on the way. I live like a gypsy—twenty and in limbo between my foundation and the real world.