going back

I recently found myself in an unfamiliar spot. I was lost. Misdirected, even. And in that moment, my heart and my head — my entire soul, really — told me what to do.

Go home.

It’s what we all do when we feel lost, I suppose. We immediately try to find our way back. We pause. Take a breath. Lean into the moment. Breathe some more. Ask for help when needed. But of course, we always wait too long, don’t we? I suspect we’re all guilty of that.

But eventually, we claw our way back to the familiar.

Just as with this writing, I haven’t created a plan or a map to guide me. I just sat down and started typing. Same with my life. No plan. No map. If I had planned better, maybe I wouldn’t be right here. Right now. Maybe I’d be in an entirely different place. Or, maybe, I’d be exactly here. We can’t know.

I don’t have a plan.

So I went home.

I don’t know how to explain the intense pull on my soul to head east when things went south. It just happened. Not exactly right away, though looking back over the past two weeks, I’d say it happened fairly quickly. When you’re told you no longer have a place in a specific place, you long to find a place where you do.

So I went home.

I’ve lived longer away from home than I ever lived there. It’s hard to believe, really. I wonder why we’re allowed to call a place home when we lived there for a shorter period than we lived any other place. It’s just the way it is. It’s home because it’s home. There’s no other way to explain it.

I moved away from western Pennsylvania when I was 18. Yet I can still close my eyes and feel and see the road ahead of me when I’m there. I can anticipate the hills. The bends. The railroad tracks. Exactly where we giggled every time our school bus went down the hill super fast and up the other side, past the pig farm that smelled so strong you could almost taste it. We held our breaths.

I am holding my breath again.

I know I need to breathe.

But breathing can be difficult.

I spent the past week at home going backward in order to move forward. I ate my favorite foods I can only get at home. I saw family I can only see at home. I even had lunch with my best friend from elementary and high school. I hadn’t seen her since 1992.

I went back so I can move forward.

I have a tattoo of a typewriter key on my right wrist. BACK SPACE. This permanent reminder on my wrist was meant to serve as a symbol of my love of vintage typewriters and as a nod to my profession as an editor. To edit, you delete things and use the BACK SPACE button quite a bit. You have the opportunity for do-overs. In fact, you have to go back to move forward.

My life has awarded me many opportunities to go back in order to move forward. I’ve had many setbacks and many chances to do things over. I suppose we all have. My situation is not unique. While I am not a fan of the execution of my BACK SPACE key, I am deeply attached to the meaning behind the art.

I am backspacing my way through life. Always have been. Two steps forward and 10 back. Always.

And yet, I catch up again. Sometimes take leaps and bounds forward. It’s what I do. I’m a backspacer.

I found my way back to Pennsylvania and did some (not all) of the things I set out to do in a few short days. I know I can and will return soon. It’s home — and I’m drawn to it more lately than ever before. I am meant to be there, surrounded by the rolling hills and the smell of corn husks drying in the late-summer heat.

I will always go back.

It’s my familiar. My space.

My home.

I played in these woods as a child. This is home.