Shocked

I should have written this on Saturday. I was pretty low then, and wanted to emphasize how different it was coming home this time. I'm in a decidedly better frame of mind now, up at Penn State with my best friend, gorgeous weather outside and my spirits shining. It's easier on my soul up here for some reason, and I find myself almost stuck in a time warp of sorts, recalling all of the fond and crazy memories I had here over the course of a few years.

Interestingly, the last time I came home, in March, from Sweden, I wrote how you can always go home again, how my house still smelled the same, my dogs remembered me and how comfortable it was. This time couldn't have been more different. 

As the days and weeks passed at the Pad, I got to the point of nearly wishing away the time in order to return home, return to familiarity, normalcy and my friends. Turns out familiarity, normalcy and my friends really existed right there, and I didn't even realize it. Funny how that works sometimes. 

Now that I'm home, I feel lost. No doubt every sailor, every adventurer, anyone who travels really, feels lost when they return home to what once was familiar and normal. I became so accustomed to life in the islands that I changed without realizing it. Coming home, everything seems different to me. Everything, even my best friends. I'm lost in my own world. What I realize though, is that nothing has changed. 

Nothing will ever change. My house, the house I grew  up in, spent the first 18 years of my life in, the house I keep returning to year after year of traveling, will always be the same. It will always have that distinct smell, not good or bad, but the smell of home. My family will always be there, will always be doing the same thing. My bed will always be made for me, the table always set in the same way. The TV will play the same thing, over and over and over again. The radio will have new music, but it will still be the same. My friends will still be doing the same things, going to the same bars, watching the same television shows, drinking the same beers. Nothing will ever change. So why, suddenly, does it all feel so different?

I've done this before. Come home, I mean. And it was the same, gloriously the same, and I always found myself exceedingly comfortable to be back in a familiar universe. Until now. I'm confused by what I see on the TV, feel strange in the air conditioning, can't stand the commercials playing on the radio. My friends are lost in their Blackberry's, and suddenly I'm a stranger in my own world. The house still smells the same, but I'm sniffing with a different nose. Nothing has changed, nothing will ever change. Except me.

Home is always familiar. Interestingly, this time I returned home to perhaps the most familiar experience that I've ever had - the father/son sailing trip aboard Sojourner, on the Chesapeake. Though the name remains the same, this was the 5th boat that we've done this trip on since I was 5 years old. Four boys and four dads, who all grew up together in the same town, in the same world. 

We sail to the same places on the Chesapeake, tell the same jokes (which are still funny), drink the same drinks (Bourbon - three turns - and coke), and re-live the same stories, over and over again. But this time I have stories of my own, yet my voice will not be heard. People at home, friends that don't travel, can never, will never understand the reasons we do it, the reasons we explore, and all the stories have no audience. For everyone else, this sailing trip was essentially an extension of every one before it - exactly the same. And suddenly, after all these years, I was the outsider. An outsider in my own world. 

The world will not change, will never change.