Taking the long way around.

It's taken me a long time to get to this place, and somehow I'm still not quite there. When I was younger I said I would never stay. I was going to escape and move someplace different. I wouldn't be like my mother who stayed in the same town she grew up in. I would have adventures. I would be bigger than this. Nothing would hold me back and no one would stop me. I was always wild. I spent most out my childhood outside getting lost in the woods and building teepees. My face was dirty and my knees were covered in band aids. My mother put bows in my hair. I played rough. My best friend lived one mile down a back road. It wasn't paved. We rode our horses through the woods and splashed in the creek. We dug up animal bones. We walked barefoot. We shared secrets. We lived at each other's houses. We were each other's other halves. Sister separated in heaven and born into different families. We were little girls together. Wild and running free. We made more mistakes than I can count on one hand, and had more adventures than I could count on two. But somewhere between then and now I decided to grow up. I selfishly decided that I was better than everything this town had to offer. I left for a few months and then I came back. I wasn't ready to be gone. I saw my old friend once in a while but I was someone different. She was the same, at least the way that I saw her. She stayed when I left. We each kept on living our own separate lives. Reconnecting every once in a while to try to go back to who we once were. It wasn't that we had changed so much. We were the same little girls even then, when we were twenty two. But I wanted to be different. I hadn't found myself yet. Settling down was the worst thing I could imagine. I tried a few times and failed miserably. I hurt people that I loved and left again. So here I am. Back in this place, just one town over. The thing about leaving is the need to come back. The ache in you feel in your heart each moment you are away.  In the past I came back here because I wasn't ready to be gone. This time I came back because I'm ready to stay. Maybe I'll settle down soon. Buy the house I grew up in, still just down the road from my oldest friend. Maybe I'll venture out into these backwoods trying to get lost and maybe I'll find myself again.