Coming back to New England. The past is a potent, dangerous thing. I can't stop thinking that, can't stop those words running around in my mind. As I drive my car down streets that hold memories of me from 25 years ago, as I laugh with my family in the kind of joyous abandon I'm capable of with very few others, as I soak in the kind of Fall beauty that made my heart stutter and my eyes water when I was 10... There is so much that is appealing about this past. So much beauty that was left behind, and is just waiting to be discovered again. And so much that is no longer me. I'm drawn to be a version of myself that I discarded as unhealthy long ago. Family and home, makes me feel like I didn't actually throw away that version of me. I just hung her up like a coat I can shrug off and on as needed. My brain is screaming at me this trip. This trip of grieving my dead sister, of comforting my shattered, resilient family. Parts of me are reveling in nostalgia, are soaking in this acceptance of myself crafted by this intense fear of loss we are all suddenly feeling. Smaller parts of me are yelling that this will not last, this almost desperate grabbing on to me that my family is doing. They are reminding me of the boundaries and barriers we had to put in place because we KNEW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they would drop us in a hot second if they knew who we really were. The fact that I speak in plural of myself when thinking out those pieces of me is telling. Those are my daemons, my automated security processes. My hyper efficient but deeply flawed mechanisms for keeping my heart from breaking so hard that I would never be able to use it again. They, too, are anachromisms. Just as outdated as my memories of my first crush. Rose colored or grey, it doesn't matter, the tints I see the world through when drawn into my past are not accurate. One thing I know to be true. When I left this behind, I didn't cut myself off. I've retained a tether, an elastic web that clings to parts of me everywhere I go. The connections to my past don't hold me down. I've never allowed them to grow brittle. Instead, I've grown into the person I wanted to be, and I've held onto the person I came from. I'm good with that. I'm finding peace with this part of me. Finding peace with my family.

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