First off, I want to apologize for doing exactly what I said I would. I'm not quite sure who it is I'm apologizing to, seeing as how I think very few actually pay attention, but I'll say it for myself. I have not kept up on this to the best of my ability and I promise to be better about it. Why didn't I? No reason really. Most likely laziness and being easily distracted by pornography or Facebook. Two websites that, if you put me under a CT scan, would activate the same parts of my brain. What can I say, conscienceless photo posting makes my cookie dough rise.
SIDE NOTE: What do Helen Thomas and my dick have in common? Both are veiny and known to lean to the left.
Anyway, over the past week I've found myself in a near perpetual state of pensiveness - catching myself dazing out windows, trailing off in thought, or just pondering the question of what "home" means to me. This is a question that I've struggled with since I left Maine, the state in which I grew up, to live out of a duffle bag for two or so years, and then up until recently, bouncing from apartment to apartment with my girlfriend and now wife, Crystal. For over ten years I've prided myself on owning as little as possible, accruing only things that I feel are needed (however warped my definition of that may be), and almost monthly throwing out garbage bags of items I've lost attachment to. I to this day have no photo albums, clothes, memorabilia, or items from my past. Some could have called it rootless but it was the easiest way for me to deal with all the tangled feelings I carried for my youth.
Why are my feelings about my upbringing so difficult? Was I abused? Did I have a hard childhood? No. In fact, quite the opposite. Well, at least at home and in comparison with others around me. I grew up in a middle class loving family. Both my parents are good, hard-working, honest people. And with the exception of normal teenage angst, I would say that we had, and have, a close relationship. With all that being said, I ran almost as far away as possible almost as soon has legally possible. Why? I've always felt separate. I've never felt a real sense of being "home". For a long time, I wasn't sure what that meant. And this is largely because of the environs in which I grew up.
I grew up in New England, and mostly in Maine near the capital area. For 11 years I lived in Winthrop, a small town of approximately 5,000 people. I would say it was a very Cider House Rules-y type of place to grow up. And I say Cider House Rules strictly with regard to topography, and not because my black orchard manager knocked up his daughter (Which he did. But I, unlike Tobey Maguire, refuse to let it be a defining moment of my youth). I guess what I'm getting at is that it was picturesque. On the outside, a town that was seemingly puritanical and pure. But underneath it's exterior was a place fraught with more problems than most. It was here that I learned how to drink and yell. It was here that I watched people use more drugs than I thought humanly possible. I've known more people than I care to mention that decided to take their own lives. This was a destructive place that people got locked in. People were designated paths and seemed to rarely deviate. "Home" only made me more and more confused about my identity. Towns that small, I felt, were stifling because your role was set. There were no other groups to migrate to. I was who I was in the pecking order. That would never change. So I left. And for the most part, I didn't look back.
I ran to Colorado. Started a new life. Reinvented myself from the inside out. Kept some old friends but mostly accrued new ones. People I would die for. I did this on my own for years. Then during a trip east to visit family, I met my partner, bane and breath of my existence, my wife. I took her back out west with me at first opportunity. In Colorado people saw me as who I am today. And because my wife had not known me prior to our initial meeting, so did she. I felt that back home, people saw me as who I was. Prone to forsaking all the work I had done.
Even with all these confused feelings and motives, I still found a way to be proud of where I was from. I told people I was proud of being "Made in Maine", even though I felt it fed all the negative parts of me. I now realize the parts I was proud of were wrong. I revered the loud mouth side. The cantankerous, booze shoe that would tell people off at the drop of a hat. That was the side I designated to my small little lakeside town.
After almost seven years, and moderate success at comedy, the opportunity presented itself to me to return to the Northeast and perform. I pushed for it. I'm not sure why seeing as how I had always felt people wouldn't understand or accept what I was doing. And when the time approached, I was more nervous than I had ever been. Would people approve who I was now? My ideas. Thoughts. The way I operated. I didn't believe they would. I believed that others would only come to see what they had seen before.
I'm proud to say I was wrong. After catching up with faces from the past, I realize I was wrong on almost every front. Wrong about what facets of my personality were fed by the place I grew up. Wrong about what people though about me. Wrong about what people wanted to see.
I learned that the place I grew up is like all things you love; complicated. While it has so many problems and shortcomings, I grew up around some of the most beautiful, tough, strong-spirited, community-minded people I could ever ask for. While some people have made decisions in their lives that I don't approve of, I have done the same myself. I realize now that people just wanted to see me do well. Wholeheartedly and purely. Because they too are proud of where they're from and they view me as part of that.
I'm still humbled almost two weeks after.
It's funny, but I thought when I left after doing those shows I would feel weakened by the experience. That I would leave needing to return to Colorado to pick myself up. But the opposite happened. I now feel like I'm ready to move forward. Why? Because I've got a few hundred of the drunkest, scariest, kindest, assiduous family members at my back.
I'm sorry if this seems rambling and poorly put together. And if this is a bit mushy, I'm sorry about that as well. Trust me, there will be more unbridled, thoughtless disregard for decency and trends coming soon. I just wanted to put this down before I forgot, as we all tend to do in our lives.
Thanks to all my Maine friends and family again. Thank you for giving me the comfort I needed.
