A Change of Emotional State (Read: From "Hungry" to "Full-bellied")

Did you notice the time of my last post? To give you perspective, it was posted just minutes before I took a shower, my parents called to wish me a happy Christmas, and my grandmother and Aunt Pat showed up at the house.

After the joy I experienced this weekend, it would be dishonourable to leave you with that post's image of my weekend with my (extended) family.

To start 'ya off, both Fizz and I were experiencing our first Christmas away from home, a potentially depressing event, regardless of your age/maturity. I never considered how much it would suck to be away from them until the time actually occurred, but by the time it was happening, I was so overcome with positive emotion that I hadn't left room for missing my immediate family.

To be fair, somewhere in the last month I've forgotten to miss home. Hunh. Weird. It likely happened when a friend returned from her first visit back home, talking about wanting to move back and missing her family even more than before she left. She reminded me of myself, when I moved to Utah and came back home for my birthday, how much that made me desperately never want to leave it again. In the end, staying away from home was the only way for me to grow and the discovery that home is never the same as you remember led me to decide that, despite that euphoric feeling of visiting "home," it was best that I kept my presence there in like fashion: a visit.

I think my parents' visit to my new home aided tremendously. There was something about the convergence of parallel lines in my new-found territory that made me feel o.k. about not living at home anymore. As it is, the people in my hometown have moved on with their lives: my bestfriend got married, Ms. Shaborgan left the country and my brother got a girlfriend. My folks are moving out of my childhood/adolescent-hood home as soon as possible next year and I'm graduating from UCF in May. All friendships I've collected there are maintainable long-distance and She is moving in on Thursday. I am officially free from Florida.

Now, for the first time ever, I actually feel free.

Back to this weekend. Like I said, I was on the telephone when Aunt Pat and Grandma pulled into the driveway. I was anxious to see them (the first time since February this year), but not anxious to get off the phone with my family. I did, eventually, and unleashed my excitement at seeing my beloved Grandmother and Aunt, two of my favourite women on the Muddy side of the family.

After hugging my Aunt and Uncle (Fizz was gracefully introduced to them before I made an entrance), I strode into the living room, where the Matriarch was resting on the sofa. We locked eyes and embraced, the intense joy welling up in my throat; I could barely speak. She held my hands so tightly, like she was never again letting go. I gave her the run-down on my life through strained lips, tucking back tears. I excused myself after a while, went into the kitchen in search of Fizz, confessed my secret and started crying as she hugged me.

Surrounded by all the strong, boisterous women I distinctly remember from my childhood, Aunt Pat asked what was wrong, loosing a shower of my tears for all to see. Fortunately, Fizz was there to speak for me, deflecting their concerned looks with words of reassurance. Uncle Marty followed closely with a wise-crack that made me laugh and everyone went about their previous activities.

And so the evening followed in similar form. When everyone gathered to open Christmas gifts (imagine a two year-old, three boys, between the ages of four and eight, and umpteen adults), I was again floored by the gifts tagged with my name on them. Not only did my family make an effort to make sure I had something to unwrap, but they did the same for Fizz, a relative stranger in their living room.

In total, I came out to my cousin Patty (assuring that, within weeks, I would be out to everyone else in the family), reconnected with all those Aunts, Uncles and Cousins I'd so wanted (but was never able) to for years on end, introduced my flatmate to my family and my family to my flatmate and remembered what it was like to be surrounded by family. It was hard to want for anything else, even if that "anything else" included my brother, mother and father. As far as I'm concerned, while they're not the same peas, they all came from the same pod. And while I didn't go home for Christmas, I was at home. And that's enough for me.