Welcome to The Archives, where I delve into a curated collection of literary gems that I personally found across the internet. This series explores and archives inspiring writings that resonate beyond conventional platforms. At times, I get so much inspiration from these writings and I hope you will too! All credits go to their respective owners.
A piece of writing I so much resonate with, as someone who left home for a place thousands of miles away. I know the feeling of returning home and finding the world where I know every street corner by heart to be both an old friend and a stranger at the same time. It’s a strange feeling.
They say you can't go home again, but that's not entirely true. You can. It just feels like reading a book for the second time and finding the characters have gone and rewritten their parts when you weren't looking.
Growing up, my hometown felt like the only place where the meest me could possibly exist, where every street corner held a memory, every breeze carried a laugh and every sunset felt like a personal performance.
Leaving felt like an act of rebellion, an assertion that there was more to me than the outlines of this familiar landscape. The move was my declaration to the world. Here I am. Watch me find myself.
But the world with its infinite wisdom decided to throw one of its many curveballs. New city, new faces, new everything. It was exhilarating until it wasn't. The novelty wore off, leaving behind a daunting question, who am I if not the person who belongs to those streets I know by heart?
So I came back tail tucked, feeling every bit the prodigal son sans the celebratory return. The failure was not in the coming back, but in thinking that I had to leave a part of myself behind to find the rest.
My hometown greeted me with open arms and many judging I told you so looks. It was comforting and suffocating, a reminder of both who I was and who I was trying to be.
But here's the thing about pit stops. They're not endpoints. They're just part of the journey. My stint back home was a detour, not a derailment.
What I was really doing was regrouping, armed with the knowledge that my hometown's gravitational pull wasn't strong enough to keep me in its orbit forever. It was my chance to refuel, to gather the pieces of myself I'd left scattered along the way.
I realized that the meest me wasn't tied to a place, but to the journey of discovery, to the act of leaving, returning, and setting out again.
So now with a renewed sense of purpose, I'm venturing out once again, carrying a little more of my hometown in my heart than I'd anticipated, not as a badge of failure, but as a compilation of my becoming.
I can understand now that finding myself isn't about distancing from where I come from, but about embracing the entirety of my experiences, every stumble, every triumph, and every return.
The real discovery is this, we aren't defined by the geography of our upbringing, but by the pasts we dare to take. Our true selves don't emerge by staying put but through the courage to move, to explore, and, yes, even circle back when necessary.
My journey hasn't made me someone new. It has revealed the depths of who I've always been, sculpted by every place I've called home, however temporary.
And in this unending voyage of self-discovery, I've learned that the meest me is fluid, ever-evolving with each step I take. Whether it's away from or back to the places I've known, in the end, we are all just travelers, finding ourselves not just in the leaving, but also in the coming back, each time a little wiser, a little fuller, and a little more ourselves.
If you enjoy calming classics, here is a playlist to check out.