The other day I was home getting bored and normally I’d go swimming but I’m resting a shoulder injury so … I went for a drive.
I drove over to where I used to work: Funtastic Publishing. It’s a big blue space-ship building about a ten minute drive from my house.
Really, I don’t know why I chose this area but it was a bad idea.
Funtastic Publishing doesn’t exist any more and the building was closed up and had a glass manufacturers sign out the front. I had that full-body flashback thing happen as I walked past and went around the block.
This was the place I spent a year working (before they moved us to the middle of nowhere). I drove there five days a week. I had some incredibly good times and some incredibly terrible times.
The grass is the same.
The signs of the industrial-ish shops around the place are the same … but degraded more.
The ice-skating rink next door still hasn’t painted their building and it looks bad. I was there in 2004 and seriously, after FOUR years, no one had bothered to paint?
After seeing everything the same or worse and having the flashbacks I went into the comparison of myself then to myself now.
This was not a good idea.
I went through four years of life in about ten minutes. All my achievements and failures. All the meals. All the girls. All the friends made and lost. All the professional advancements. All the professional failures. All the good times. All the bad times.
There are significant differences between Mat2004 and Mat2008, especially in the realms of professional achievement, relationships, travel and money.
But I discount and forget big things. I adapt to them and don’t care that X number of books were printed that I wrote or Y kids will be reading this or I have Z more friends now.
The only thing that stuck in my mind was that in 2004 I wanted to write fiction books for a living and here I am in 2008 not writing fiction books for a living. I’ve done a lot of writing in the duration but I felt a crush that I have not achieved publication of an original piece of fiction work.
I suppose it is a big goal and I have made measurable progress toward it but it still hurt and walking around that area made it hurt more than usual.
This is why you can never go home again. Because home doesn’t exist. Some place exists and it looks a bit like home but it’s a bit more rusted, a bit more flaked and absent of friends.
All that is waiting there is the ghost of yourself, silently berating you for not becoming what it wanted you to become.
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Mathew Ferguson