quarter-life crisis

i've been having these strange dreams lately where i go to visit my parents in my hometown and nothing is the same as it ever was. i can't remember how to get places, and my favorite park is replaced with an office building. i get home and i find myself pacing the floors of an abandoned house. my parents are gone and i'm really frustrated to learn that my hometown is no longer my home. that the small town where i grew up has grown up too, and in some way, has outgrown me. wants nothing to do with me.

the last time i had these dreams was this summer in d.c. before that, i had them first semester at chapel hill. evidently, leaving michigan, my family, everything i have ever known my whole life, had an effect on me. occasionally, i'd see michigan alumni plates on a car while driving in chapel hill, and at first, i wouldn't think much of it. and then it'd hit me: they're not from here. this is how people probably reacted to seeing my car's plates during my first few months there. she's not from here. she's from michigan. and it's true. i will always be from the midwest. a snow-loving, cherry-picking, suburban girl from michigan. i bake with soda & drink a pop. i know how to pronounce mackinac. even a thumb has geographical, rather than anatomical significance. and yeah, i picked corn in the summers with the farmer behind my house.

but i came back. my parents got sick, my sister met someone great, and i had an open invitation to come back. now, more than a year later, i'm still having these dreams despite my being here. still trying to figure out how to make michigan... how to make any place feel like home. and i realized this: i am looking for something that doesn't really exist anymore.

it's unnerving. i've feel as though i've become the antithesis of my usual idealistic self. i'm tired of the law. i'm tired of trying to help everyone else. i miss the stage. i wanna go back to endless dancing and singing, and i desperately need to start playing my guitar again. i just miss losing myself in something wonderful. it's making everything else lack purpose.

i suppose all people go through this at some point. life happens and it makes people wary of what's to come. you wonder if you lost your footing once you've lost your youth. but while i'm definitely at the quarter mark of my life, i don't want what i'm going through to be a crisis anymore.