Headed Home...

I have been in Chicago and Louisville for the past week. Chicago has three dear friends that love me very much, and though I don't really care for the city, being with them has been immensely healing. Last night, when I got back to Chicago from Louisville, the couple I'm staying with told me that to them, I'm family. The statement came about because when I was here early last week, a package arrived for them while I was gone. Amber asked why I didn't open it, sincerely. "You're family!"

This is the only house that isn't my actual family where there's a picture of me on the fridge, far as I know. I'm sitting on the bed in their guest room right now, the sheets stripped and drying just outside the door. I should have left nearly three hours ago. I'm just going to hit awful traffic now. But my gut is all in knots and I keep tearing up. I'm afraid to go home. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't know what the next few months hold for me, and I'm afraid.

I've been away for a week and it is the happiest, most content I've been for months. Since before Chris and I broke up. I had a week of adult conversations, interactions, situations. I went out, to shows, to bars, to restaurants, and no one was obnoxious, no one acted a fool, no one said any stupid shit to me, and it was eye-opening. I've thought for a bit now that maybe I'm really done with the party life. Like most things I do actually mean eventually, I think I've been saying this for about three years now. I want reasonable, adult people in my life. We can still go to shows, go to bars, go out and drink, but getting shit faced doesn't feel like me anymore. Fucking dudes who have appropriately thick bodies and the right amount of chest hair but are assholes doesn't feel like what I should be doing anymore. You'd think that would have occurred to me some time ago, and it did, about half-way, nearly a year ago, but, fuck.

I think I'm done. I want to focus on me, on healing all the things I'm holding onto that make me difficult to be close to (with the understanding that I am always going to be an intense, difficult person. I know that's who I am, and I don't want to be someone else. I do want some smoother edges, though). My other friend here in Chicago told me I'm much calmer than last we met two years ago. That means a lot to me.

Every year for the past three years I've gone on a trip this time of year that's put huge things into perspective and moved me forward a great deal. Memphis in 2011 pushed me toward forming my band. New Orleans 2012 made me realize just how many toxic people I was keeping in my life. I hope looking back around this time next year, it'll feel like something just as big was created from my travels.