Coming Home

"Why do you go away? So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. The people there see you differently too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving" -Terry Pratchett

This quote was on the program for our final convocation in Rome, and it has been bouncing around in my head ever since. Coming home is always hard for me. It's hard to readjust to family life, and most of all, it's hard to readjust to Littleton's laid-back pace. And by laid-back, I of course mean, nothing has changed in at least the past fifty years. I am really not cut out for small town living. I just really do not like it at all. I absolutely love big cities with all their convenience and, honestly, anonymity.

I'm a fairly quiet, shy person, and it's much more comfortable for me to just blend in with the crowd. In such a small county as this one, I am constantly plagued with the terrifying idea that everyone knows who I am. I was on the phone in Wal-mart the other day, and when I hung up I realized that half the county (who were, of course, all in Wal-mart because it was a Saturday) now knew everything about my life. I'm sure that in small houses all over the county, gossipy elderly ladies are worrying all about my problems, which is nice of them, but really, they don't need to bother.  They're nice people and everything, but I miss the ability to slide into the background.

I notice this particularly in one specific circle. When I was in high school, my family was still settling into Littleton, and our social circle was very limited. This was all fine and dandy until my senior year, when things suddenly went bonkers, and the drama level became unbearable. Now, most of my memories of the parish have a distinctly unpleasant flavor to them. I wish it weren't this way, but when you're sixteen, and you feel pressured to conform to some standard that is not your own and which is not something your parents are not sure that they are 100% comfortable with, you start to rebel. Now, let me make this perfectly clear. I am not the rebellious type. As a matter of fact, I am about as unrebellious as a person can be, but, like most people, I do not enjoy being told what to do, particularly if the person doing the telling has no right to do so.

So I rebelled- that is, fled. I graduated a year early, went to college, studied abroad for a semester, and was as generally smug about all my accomplishments as it is possible to be. For a very long time, I nursed a lot of anger and resentment towards those whom I thought had hurt me. Now, I suppose that most of the hurt was in my head, but it always gave me an unpleasant little prick whenever I'm with these people during breaks. I would always try to play up my own importance and accomplishments, so as to distance myself from the offending parties and unpleasant recollections. I would always think, "Don't they know that none of the stuff they care about is important?"

But coming home after a semester of historical, life-changing experiences has taught me one thing. That my own injuries are very small, and that in such a small place small things get blown out of proportion. And I also came to realize that these small matters are as important to these people, as my big, world-renown matters are to me. The lives of people here in Littleton matter as much as the lives of the trendy Italians, the Pope, and all the other people I admired on my travels. Littleton may not be much, but to some people, it's their whole world.