Happy Monday everyone! Today we are back with our Year of Writing to Uncover the Authentic Self from Daily OM. Yes, this was supposed to be done every week. Yes, it started in January. Yes, I’m still going to keep going, even though it will carry into a good chunk of next year.
There were several different prompts and ideas for this particular topic. The different places and spaces you inhabit help shape you, but memory is also a very funny thing. I have very vivid memories of my childhood home in south Florida, but when I look back at old pictures, I find that it looks a bit different from the way I remembered it. Sometimes it is the place itself that changes. When I was a kid, my parents and I would take trips up to Gatlinburg, Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains. My mom and I haven’t been there in a really long time (my dad passed away 20 years ago), and we have been talking about trying to plan a trip. She has been looking up videos and pictures on Instagram and YouTube and it is amazing to see how things there have changed. It is not the same town of my childhood and I think that is why I have been hesitant to go. I’m afraid it will hurt to see part of my childhood changed so much.
I’ve also looked up my old house on Zillow recently and that was trippy. Let’s just say that my old bedroom doesn’t exist anymore. One of the owners since we left had torn down walls to expand the living room. I haven’t seen the place since I was sixteen years old, which is longer ago than I care to admit, but it was still shocking to know that my bedroom was just gone.
There are other places from my childhood that have either changed beyond recognition or are just places I can no longer visit for a variety of reasons. Are all of these changes bad? No, most likely not. I guess in some ways it makes me feel like some of those places changing or going away erases the memory somehow. Which isn’t true, of course, but it feels true. These places will always live on in my heart the way I remember them, even if the way I remember them is not the way they currently are. They have evolved, as have I. And that’s not a bad thing.
Categories: Daily OM
Life With No Plot 
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