dracut is a place where i made a lot of stupid, life-altering, friendship-ruining mistakes connected, directly or indirectly, to youth, ignorance, or inexperience. in other words, it's the place i grew up. i always have mixed emotions about going back, as evidenced by probably nearly half of this blog's content, if not more. see here, for example. catherine used to call it 'dracutting' when i went home for a weekend during freshman year, as if it were a kindly jaunt, but with a subtext of self-mutilation. in my creative writing non-fiction class last semester, i wrote a piece that included a bit of a rhapsody on this issue, based on a particular post from here that got a great response from those of similar age.

all of which means i spend a lot of time wondering if the people i see when i go back (when i see people) see it the same way as i do when they have similar feelings. and i spend a lot of time wondering about this peculiar aspect of myself that wants to back out right before longed-for situations. i'll really want to see someone but have nothing to say when the moment actually comes, even though i've been depressed about not seeing them for such an inappropriately long time beforehand. i've always been like this; i've always been vexed by it. how i'm almost scared to head dracutward for emmie's party tomorrow because i don't want to drive through the unfamiliar overdeveloped outskirts and make the requisite stop at my parents' and have to see a room full of relics of that past life, especially now that laura and i are racing through time towards the little place by the water, our imagination made brick. a week from today the move begins, and a visit to the past is last on my list of things to pack.

but there's plenty to be said for the spontaneity i've been missing out on all these years, and if i can let my analytical self go for a few hours i'll happily alight out of salem in sasha towards the friends i should have had all along and a town devoid of negative associations, since i don't have to live there anymore.