It's strange how a place can be so utterly unchanged and yet so completely different.
This past week, I returned to a place that represents what used to be a large part of my life. St. Mary of the Woods College, in Terre Haute, is where band camp was held 3 of the 4 years I was in the marching band in high school. Despite all the stigmas associated with it, band camp has always been a place of routine and structure: stretches in the morning, breakfast, march, lunch, free time, music rehearsals, march, dinner, march, etc. I know this schedule backwards and forwards. I spent one week every summer for 4 years following it.
When we got to St. Mary's, I was comforted to find that nothing had changed since I last saw it. The dorm, Le Fer, with its marble floors and high ceilings looked just how I remembered it as we climbed the 3 flights of marble stairs to the fourth floor, the same one where we stay every year. The conservatory was just as run-down and dimly lit as always and the practice rooms just as muggy and cluttered. Even the food was the same: tater tots at least twice during the week, the best salad bar in the world and a small, yet never disappointing ice cream selection.
It was all so familiar, so inviting and welcoming. It felt like going home again, back to a place where I know what I'm doing and I know who I am and where I belong...a place where everyone knows me, and I don't have to explain myself to anyone. But something was different. This year, rather than being one of the students, one of the band, I was there as staff, a marching and music instructor. I suddenly found myself in an entirely different position as I thought back to all the instructors I'd had throughout the years. They'd all seemed so much older than I was, and I admired them (most of them) and looked up to them and tried and failed to imagine being like them.
I've found that there are these rare moments in life when you're able to see yourself through the eyes of those around you, and it puts your life into a very different perspective.
This was one of those times.
As I went through the daily routine and walked (not marched) all over this campus that I know like the back of my hand, what I finally came to realize is that the thing that is different - the thing that has changed while everything has remained seemingly the same - is me. The person that I used to be, the one who knew what she was doing and who she was and where she belonged, that person is gone. That life is gone. The person I am now is so completely and indescribably different from that girl that it feels as if I never lived that life at all. It's as if I'm describing someone else's life, not my own. When I think about it, it's almost like I'm remembering it in the third person. And the fact is, I don't belong there any more, at least not in the same capacity. And I don't know who this person is, at least I don't fully understand yet.
It's a strange feeling when you realize you've lost a part of yourself. It's like that little piece has left your body and your mind, but then, when you return to those old, familiar places, it's still there, like a ghost of you...following you, haunting you. But not all ghosts are bad. Some are there to remind you of who you were and show you who you are. They help you to relive the past, the good times and the bad times, and see how far you've come.
That place, St. Mary's, and many others will always feel like home to me. It will always be a place where I can feel safe and wanted and secure. But if what they say is true (and I think it is), you can't go home again. You can visit, stay the weekend, but it will never be the same. It's now just a part of your past...my past. All I can do is be here, now, and know that this is where I belong. I'm going to live and enjoy my life now, in the present, so that when it becomes the past, I can know that the person who haunts all the places I now call home is every bit of the person I wanted to be. It's all that I can do, and it's exactly what I'm doing.
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