Cloudless night in the country

I saw many old friends and people I grew up with this evening. Mike and Kristen had a cookout in the back yard in Richmond. The friends from high school all here, now married with kids and houses and such. Mirror images of their parents and of one another sometimes. Everyone all grown up though everything still just the same.

Often visiting back here I feel so isolated and alone, so out of place through the act of simply being me and going off and doing what I do, thinking the way I think, living the way I live. Maybe its just me. The realization of difference can be liberating or isolating. When I come back here I am aware of that feeling acutely sometimes. It is a lonely feeling that gnaws at my return and dims these visits home if I let it.

It is hard to be both part of a place and apart from it simultaneously....