Can't go home again....

I know they say you can't go home again, I just had to come back one last time. Ma'am, I know you don't know me from Adam. But these handprints on the front steps are mine. Up those stairs in that little back bedroom is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar. And I bet you didn't know that under that live oak, my favorite dog is buried in the yard. I thought if I could touch this place or feel it, this BROKENESS inside me might start healing. Out here it's like I'm someone else, I thought that maybe I could find myself....If I could just come in I swear I'll leave won't take nothing but a memory...from the house that build me. (Miranda Lambert-The house that built me)

I just recently went back to Jacksonville, Fl roughly a month ago to visit my older brother Tommy and his beautiful family. I hadn't been back there since 2002. Eight years has past since I last saw the house that built me. I left that house back when I was 17 years old and never even thought to look back. I can still picture that tree forts my brother and our neighborhood friends built. I can still picture us playing a nighttime game of man hunt. I can still hear my mother doing her infamous "wistle" to call us home for dinner. I have so many memories from that house on Candlewyck Lane. Most of the advantageous memories cover the blanket of damaging ones.  There were many laughs shared in that house, there were plenty of tears shed, many  abhorrent words spoken or actually yelled through those walls, up the stairs and even out the door.  I can sit and close my eyes and see my brother and I through our stages in life, in that house. Every time the door swing open Tommy got a little older...headed from first day of Elementary school to his third prom night in one week. I can see myself running in and out of that front door each time wearing different jersey, volleyball, softball, soccer, basketball whatever the season whatever the sport. I can see my father walking out and my mother standing on the other side of the screen door with tear filled eyes wondering if he would be coming back. I can still see my father pulling off, in whatever truck he was currently driving, with smoke burning under the tires and a puff flowing from his driver side window. I can see my mother sitting on the couch just anxiously awaiting human interaction, from her very own family that she yearned so badly for. I see my brother and I growing into our very own personalities and trying to find ourselves amongst the storm of turmoil that was living in that house. I can see myself growing from a young girl who was much a happy content  into a resentful gypsie of a teenager. That house was built on a bed of deceit. I thought if I went back that day it would dry out those feelings of disbelief. I thought that I could take that right from Cobblewood  Road onto Candlewyck Lane and pull up in front of 12065 and see those eyes of my mother standing on the porch or in the driveway waiting for me to come home. I drove that day, down that street that still fill my mind of times past, I pulled up to still very recognizable house that built me. I parked...I stared, I wish I could just walk through that front door and see her sitting there anxiously awaiting but not expecting any visitors and see her face brighten up the moment she saw it was me. She sat in that house and I left, what I would have done to be able to get out of that car that day and swing that door open one last time. Never did she hold a grudge as to why and how I left to begin with but I can't go home again, because that house in not my home anymore...it built me, but when I left I took all the memories with me.