The House That Built Me

The Atlantic coastline, Marshfield, Mass.

The last time my man lived in Wisco, we took a trip to Indiana to attend a mountain biking and bluegrass festival. I didn't really realize it beforehand, but on the drive there I looked up and saw a mileage sign that read:

West Lafayette 22

"Wow," I remarked. "We're so close. I feel like we should go."

My boyfriend was game, and so we traveled back to the old neighborhood, saw my old house, my friend's houses, my elementary school, etc.

I hadn't been back in years, and the effect on me was chilling. I didn't have the language or the resources I have now to describe what was happening -- I know now I was triggered. Big time.

As a result, the weekend was HARD. It had it's upsides, including a successful mountain biking debut, and it was HARD in the way big feelings you don't know what to do with are hard.

That's all to say that for years I have been wanting to see where my boyfriend grew up. He didn't have a great desire to take me, but long distance stint #2 (which we are currently enjoying) provided a pretty perfect opportunity: He's living in New Hampshire right now, and I flew out for his birthday. Into Boston. Today.

And so he took me. And he showed me the house that built him, the ocean he swam in, the schools he went to, the woods he walked in, his friends' houses... and he was really good with it. He seemed to enjoy showing me, and it stimulated a lot of conversation about things from his past about which I'd been curious.

He and I were both pretty severely wounded by traumatic childhoods. This much is true. And this trip back to his hometown showed just how far we've come on our healing journeys, together and as a couple.

This Miranda Lambert song, which came to my attention before we made this trip, seems apropos:

I know they say you can't go home again
I just had to come back one last time
Ma'am I know you don't know me from Adam
But these handprints on the front steps are mine

Up those stairs in that little back bedroom
Is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar
I bet you didn't know under that live oak
My favorite dog is buried in the yard

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it's like I'm someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself

If I could just come in I swear I'll leave
Won't take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me

You leave home and you move on and you do the best you can
I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am

Well Miranda, I guess sometimes you've gotta get lost in order to be found...