Story Weekend: Leaving Home
It’s that time again! Another story weekend. I’m watching the TV series Friday Night Lights on Netflix instant play and wow, what a great show. Tonight’s episode is about leaving home, so I thought that would be a good theme for us this week.
If you’re new to Story Weekend, here’s how it works: I pick a theme and you share something from your life that relates to that theme, however you interpret it. Thanks to all of you who’ve been contributing. I’ve loved reading your (very short!) stories. As always, there are a few “rules”:
- The story must be true.
- Try to keep it under 100 words. Embrace the challenge! That’s about six or seven lines in the comment form. I want others to read your story, and most people tend to skip if it’s too long. I know how tough it is to “write tight” but I hope you’ll accept this as a challenge.
- Avoid offensive language.
As usual, I’ll start it off with my own story.
I talked back. I stayed out late. I smoked in the house. I rolled my eyes. I told them things I knew would upset them. I was doing my job as a teenager, making them glad to see me go.
Temporarily, at least.
I was leaving. I wasn’t leaving. I was getting married. No, I’d wait until he came back. I got mono. Of course I couldn’t go. But he said he couldn’t manage without me. We traveled to Texas to see the university. The neighbor called me a slut because we weren’t married. My mother defended me. My grandmother watched. I took leave of my job. We went to Texas. We came home. Married. The college didn’t want us. But I’d left home. I couldn’t come back. It was time to be on my own.
I moved away to a city for school. Loved it. Didn’t want to come home, ever. I had freedom- finally. I knew what I wanted with my life after graduation. Or so I thought. Moved even farther away. New York City bound. Happy and excited to be on my own. Only to learn the grass is not always greener on the other side. Back home again.
—first time to write under Story Weekend… lol. Hope I did it right!
Perfect!
Anger. That’s why I left home. Divorcing parents and a 16 year old daughter just trying to survive the teenage years….not a good combination.
Tears. That’s what leaving home got me. Fell in “love” with the wrong man. He was my escape, my father figure. 14 years later I didn’t want a father figure anymore. I left “home” again. I had grown up. Now, I’m laughing again. I’m loving again. And I wouldn’t change any of it for a second because it’s made me who I am.
All through high school I couldn’t wait to leave home. I believed I was so much smarter and braver and independent than I was. Leaving home, however, turned out to be me being left behind when my parents and siblings moved across country while I chose to stay where I was. Wound up a lonely place to be, and not nearly as glamorous and sexy as I thought it would be. It left me apologizing later to my parents who I appreciated so much more when I was riding my bike to two crummy part time jobs, struggling to pay rent with a roommate I hated, scraping together to buy groceries, putting myself through community college, and missing the chaos I once called home.
I don’t think that I have ever really left home. I carry it with me like a turtle in the trunk attached to the top of my heart. My conversations are peppered with my father’s words of wisdom. The fragrance in my kitchen rich with the nutmeg of my mother’s apple pie. My failings haunted by the lessons taught but not always learned. My hair still long ever since the day I got it cut short and my mother told me it had lost it ‘glamour’:}. The sweater I wear today the same one that my mom knit for me at age ten, in a freezing kitchen with her jacket on under the light of a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Maybe I just hang onto home because I find my comfort there or maybe I am just a house, a home, in dire need of haunting.
I thought I was prepared but I was not! Well wishers had attended the graduation party, some took the mic to share special memories and we danced to the DJ while good times were had by all. Bags were packed and loaded into the shiny new vehicle, lists of essentials were rechecked and snacks were readably accessible for the long trip to begin the next chapter of life. There were hugs, kisses and good wishes. Big proud smiles and waves goodbye. But we tearfully collapsed into each other’s arms as the truck drove away with our precious daughter, our joy!
I left home at the age of 24. My husband and I met at Taco Bell. We both stopped there to eat on our way to an Islanders game. Being that we both had jerseys on, he struck up a conversation with me and that was it. We just knew. We looked at a house together 1 month later. I loved it, so he bought it. He said he didn’t know how he could afford a ring. I said, “I don’t care about the ring, I care about you. We can get one from Wal-Mart for all I care.” That is what we did and my engagement ring still looks beautiful 9 years later. After 10 years together, we have a house, 8 years of marriage and 2 great kids.
I left home when I was 28 years old. I met my husband at Whispers dance club. We got married at the justice of the peace wearing my black leather jacket. Sexy I know! I then went to work that night. When I got home he had dinner all cooked for me. 18 years later we are happily marreid with 2 beautiful daughters.
Could not wait to leave the small town where there was nothing to do. Moved an hour and a half away when I got married. I moved to a tourist town with a lot to do. I hated it because my friends and family were not there. I stayed for a year then moved back home. Now I live next door to my parents. I love having them so close.
She never saw him cry like that before. Standing at the airport, holding her as if he’d never let her go he asked ‘are you sure you’re ready for this’…she replied, ‘yes dad, you are giving me the gift of a lifetime to study painting in Florence…I want this opportunity.’ Bravely, she turned and walked toward the plane with tears running down her cheeks. Looking back, her mother & father waved. Margo was leaving home for the 1st time with wanderlust in her heart.
It wasn’t when I turned 18 and went away to live in the college dorm and thought I was independent. It wasn’t even my junior year in college, when I had a job and decided to stay in my college town instead of going home for the summer. After all, I could always go home. My childhood house would always be my “forever home”. Instead, it was during my senior year in college when my mother died, and my father quickly remarried and sold the house that it hit me. I could never go home again.
I LOVE reading these! You guys are good.
17 years old and no where to go. Father decides that he longer wants to parent a teenage girl. Living in a shelter for children and scared out of my wits. Mom left me on christmas eve 10 years before and never returned. Moved thousands of miles away after graduating high school on my own. Met a wonderful man and have 4 beautiful children. Memories of abuse are still in the fore front of my mind, but the smiles on my children’s faces and the love of my husband help me the person I am today.