Growing Away

It is like something you know the shape of; there is something familiar about how the day begins around you, as though it is the return of someone back into your life that you used to know. It brings with it a strangeness; a hesitation, as though you are not quite sure you are the same people any more. It is a feeling that something may have happened to one, or both, of you that has taken your life, or lives, off down another road away from who you used to be.

You know, though, that you have changed and that the familiarity has, at the same time, has an edge of unfamiliarity, as though you have grown out of that old life and it doesn’t quite fit any more. You no longer think the same things, say the same things, believe the same things, wear those same clothes or listen to that same music.

In a way you would think it strange that you did live, think and feel as you once did. Growing up, growing older, must contain at least an element of growing away, of movement toward something new. Ideally, it would be something deeper, richer, fuller; a growing of understanding of the world and how it shapes us and how we can shape ourselves to fit into those places where we can find ourselves some new home beyond that place and that life we once lived.