78. December 15

It is the strangest thing to return home after quite some time away and to sleep in the same bed that you dreamt away your childhood in. The past layers upon itself on my bedroom shelves in the form of knicknacks, dried roses, sea shells, journals, and books. How far away today childhood seems! I shuffled through clothes that had been left in my closet: prom dresses, a graduation gown, coats, and costumes, all hanging like ghosts of yesterdays since forgotten.

Who is this girl who wore these prom dresses and carefully hung the corsages to dry? Is she the same girl as the child who stenciled crooked  hearts and bows on the walls? And is that child the same girl as the teenager whose stacks of unfinished writings now fill the dresser drawers? Who is it that carefully selected these shelves and shelves of books, picked these curtains, and chose these pictures? Who is it that taped a map of Europe by the door, next to pictures printed off the internet of fields of golden daffodils, pictures to help her memorize the words of Wordsworth? Who is it that carefully packed away her old dolls and stuffed animals, saving them for children of her own? Is she the same girl who flew home only yesterday after months away in Asheville? Who does she make me?

I've always disliked the idea of finding yourself. I don't know about you, but I don't recall getting lost in the first place. And if I was to find myself, then what? Would that be the climax of all growth and progression in being? What happens after one is "found"? I prefer the idea of creating and becoming yourself. I feel in these few months away that I haven't found a missing girl, but I've created more out of who I was already. Life is an endless process of becoming and creating, not a search for a stagnant ending. And, for me, much of this process is evidenced on the shelves of my childhood bedroom. Here, home has remained an unaltered marker off of which I can gauge my progression in becoming.

"The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. Seek therefore, not to find out Who You Are, but seek to determine Who You Want to Be."
 ~ Neale Donald Walsch