Garden State is a movie that came out right after I moved to Tennessee for grad school. I arrived in Knoxville not knowing anyone and while I had a roommate and met some people at church and in class, it was pretty lonely. I think it really took me eight or nine months to find a place where I felt comfortable (figuratively speaking) and I was really only there for 10 months. Meanwhile, Garden State tells the story of "A quietly troubled young man [who] returns home for his mother's funeral after being estranged from his family for a decade."
Once I got past the first 10-15 minutes of drugs and f-bombs, I fell in love with the movie. I don't know that I was troubled, and I wasn't estranged from my family, but I felt like I could connect with Large's (Zach Braff) search for home during that period of my life. My favorite quote from the movie was…
"You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone… You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."
When you're single in your 20s and 30s (and potentially beyond I suppose) it's easy to feel stuck in between "homes." The home you grew up in, that you long for, doesn't really exist anymore. And yet the home you think your future holds, that you long for, that doesn't exist either… at least not yet. There can be an awkward period in between that can make a person go crazy feeling homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I can be homesick longing for these things that don't exist… or I can embrace the places of "home" as I find them.
I just spent my first weekend in Fayetteville since selling my house. I was without a "home," but I couldn't help but feel at home. I'm sure the fact that it was "homecoming" didn't hurt, but there's just something about driving on campus, or walking in Scrub Oaks or seeing some of my favorite people… that makes me feel at home. I know it was time for me to move back to Maryland when I did, but I will always consider Methodist another home away from home. I know it won't always be the same... At some point I'll go back to visit and no one will know who I am or be willing to spend four hours with me in the Lion's Den. But the Lion's Den.. the soccer field.. Weaver.. my old office… Just some of the place that will always remind me of the people that made it home for me.
Home isn't a house or a place you can always go back to, but it's definitely the people and the memories from those places that I call home.
