Little Homesickness

    Going into college, I never expected myself to be the kid who turned in early and locked himself in his dorms for long spans of time. And up to this point I've been right in my predictions. But as time goes on I can feel it coming on. Might not ever be to that degree because I'm too much of a busy-body, but in some form I feel it will come. It's becoming more and more likely with each piece of home I stumble over as I find my way in this new place. Whether it's hearing a voice that sounds like my mother's, noticing my mannerisms that mimic my father's, or even seeing the same species of tree that my brothers and I used to swing on teeter and totter in the breeze while the wind carries it's petals into the great beyond. It doesn't help that each weekend I'm greeted with the possibility that my parents may come down to watch me play, only to have such offers retracted within 48 hours of their consideration. It's okay though, I understand what must be going on at home. I'm aware that the problems that existed before I left surely still do past my departure, and they most likely haven't been tended to, only boxed up and packed away.
    Growing up and with my parents fighting, I always kind of took it upon myself to cash in on the black sheep reputation I'd had cast upon me. In many ways, to me, it seemed easier to take the bulk of the frustration on myself for the sake of the household because you know, people unite behind a common enemy. Not that I didn't do things to deserve their frustrations outside of this goal, but I did very much have this intention. And for most of the time it worked. But with how things seem to be going now, now that I'm gone, it seems that hostilities have settled ( within my limited knowledge of what it's like back home ). It's as if though they still aren't where they want to be in their marriage ( my parents of course ), they unite behind collectively missing me. And that's a very different kind of hurt to deal with, missing someone. It's not one I'm used to. At least not in this light. It's weird. Makes me feel like I have to live up to that much more and accomplish that much more in my time at OU because when I go back I don't want their pains to have been in vain.
    It also doesn't help that after 18 years of living with these people, my family, I had only just then, right before I left for college, managed to secure a solid relationship with them and grown in it. My family has never been the "go on vacations in the summers" or "let's go out to dinner" type. And to this day we still aren't. Recently we had a family dinner to celebrate my birthday because I hadn't asked for a party or even any gifts, and it just went... Not well, or badly, it just "went". We tried over the years, of course. Maybe once or twice for each. And each came to the same end. One and done. Never tampered with or repeated again. It took me 17 years before I decided I truly wanted to invest in my father and understand him. 15 for my mother. 18 for my brothers. And though I do not regret anything in this life, if I did, these truths would be some of them. I'm not going to go into why this was the case ( that is for another post some other time ), but it is what it is and it wasn't until halfway through this summer after a particularly tumultuous 2 years that I finally thought we'd pulled together nicely. We were back to the kind of family we were when I was small, my baby brother was a tot, and we played outside with my father with footballs, dragonflies, torn jeans and worn sneakers.

    Its been about 2 months of having no contact whatsoever with my family and I re-read the letter my father sent me earlier this year, and the one my mother wrote for me a week or two ago almost every day. I think they're more astonished than I am when I tell them I miss them. But I really do miss them.