Back in North Dakota

Earlier today I made the long drive with my parents up to Grand Forks, North Dakota. I got up at 4:30 a.m. after going to bed at 1:30 a.m. and then spent the next 12 & 1/2 hours in the car. Upon exiting the interstate and making the drive downtown for dinner, I immediately felt it: the surreal, dream-like effect of being back here, before I even got out of the car. It didn't feel like I had ever left North Dakota and stayed in Indiana for the past three months; instead, it felt like the past three months had actually been some kind of dream and that I had woken up where I was still living all along. It honestly feels like I never left. I know people say that all the time, that it feels like just yesterday, but it really does.

It's similar to the feeling I get every time I'm in Muncie and I drive past the old house on Neely. It's a very powerful nostalgia. I expect that if I went in the front door, I would find Dan and Greg (and Brian, if we're concerning ourselves with the house on Ashland) hanging out, about ready to start band practice; my bed and all my belongings would be in my old room; my shelves in the kitchen would be well stocked with my favorite foods. It's like that, only it's real. It's 100% real. It's the only time in life that you could ever get to act on that nostalgic desire. You want to open that door and look inside? You're going to be sorely disappointed and disillusioned. Only it's real. I am back in the room I lived in (albeit for only four months), and scarcely anything has changed.

I walked up to the front door with Joe as we carried in my bags and blankets, and it felt like I had just stepped out for groceries. We opened the front door and I went back to my old room and set my stuff down. The mattress I slept on was in the exact same spot as it was when I left. I'm currently sitting on that mattress and I just can't wrap my brain around this concept. My bed is still here. There's my roommate sitting on the couch watching the TV in the living room; all precisely as I left them. The teriyaki sauce and frozen vegetables I left in the refrigerator are still there, untouched, waiting for me to make stir fry right now. Where have I been all this time? Not here, but surely not there.

I can't tell what month it is; it could be September or October for all I know. I feel like I'm in a time warp, that I'm rewinding, like coming here turned the clock back to immediately before I left in December, and leaving again in a few days will then wind it right back to just before I originally came here; I will return to Indiana and it will be August 2009 again. Everything that has happened to me will unhappen. Decisions I made will be unmade. All my mistakes will be unmistook. The people who entered my life will unenter, and the people who have left my life will unleave.