I made a fairly big call recently. I decided to return to my home town in regional coastal Western Australia. It is a place seething with bad memories, and as I have made very clear on this blog before, the source of much trauma.
As I was flying in, I realised something.
This isn’t a bad place. It’s a place where bad memories were made. And this week, I have had an opportunity to make new memories, and this place doesn’t seem so bad anymore. It’s uncomfortable to walk the streets, I have more anxious sweat then I ever realised was possible for a human to produce, and it’s triggering some very unstable mood shifts. But it’s been… okay. It’s been good. I saw my drama family (AKA my youth theatre of twelve years), and it has made me happier than I have been in a long time.
I suppose things change, and I’m glad that for once, they’ve changed in a good way.
Bad memories lurk beneath green rolling hills,
simmering with seasons toiled by decay,
a land marked for its absence and its lack,
even by those who choose to stay.
This place festers with bygones and
the wayward lost, to vices disguised
as adolescent adventures.
This place hides hurt beneath
roiling waves that crumble against the collapsing coast.
Salted waters sting against scars
leaving breathless gasps to mark their paths.
This place is one of hatred and despair,
with privileged joys mistaken for burdens,
with experience lost through ash coloured glasses,
that which cannot be returned nor replaced.
This place is underestimated, with its
stifling heat, and broods of gossips gathering;
the single skyscraper, barely reaching the clouds
that graze the sky rarely and tenderly
to drop an ocean desperately sought
by those governed meticulously by time.
This place is powerfully loaded, and painful,
and desecrated – not unlike myself –
But this place is mine;
this place is home.
