I left the town I grew up in ten years ago. I still do not know if I ran towards something or away from something. Both, probably.
When I visit, I feel like a stranger wearing a familiar coat. The streets know me. I no longer know them. I miss a version of myself I could only be there, and I do not want her back.
— Anonymous
A Reflection
You are allowed to miss what you chose to leave. Grief and freedom are not opposites.
The self you were in that town is not lost. She is folded into the person writing this letter. She helped you know what you did not want. That is a kind of gift, even when it arrives disguised as distance.
Home is not always a place we return to. Sometimes it is a place we carry, quietly, in the way we notice light, or greet strangers, or hold a cup of tea in the morning.
You have not betrayed her by becoming someone else. You have kept your promise to her.