Southern Comfort Zone

It’s amazing how a place can hold a memory. Good or bad. How sitting in front of a place, driving or walking through it can make your heart skip beats and stomach do backflips. How tears can sting your eyes at the pain it brings to mind or, if you’re lucky, the joy it brings your soul. 

I recently took a mini weekend getaway to where I lived in Tennessee. To kill time while my friends worked, I drove around the city that’s grown so immensely it’s hard to take it all in. I drove through town, admiring in jealousy, all of the new thriving businesses being built and thinking about how everything at home in Ohio doesn’t compare to the life here. It was when I drove past and thought of my three apartments that I felt overly sentimental towards this city. 

I drove into the parking lot of the first place I lived and I parked my car. I stared at the windows and door of my building thinking about how much excitement there was in this small one bedroom apartment. I remembered the hundreds of jobs I applied for, the first couch and dining room table I ever purchased. How I never even knew my neighbors because everyone kept to themselves and it was quiet and nice. I remembered the love that filled that apartment when an ex and I started dating, how much I loved when my brother and sister-in-law visited me for the first time there for his birthday and how we celebrated Mexiceaster for the first time! We made up a new Easter tradition my family continues to do together in Ohio where we make a Mexican feast!  That apartment was a stepping stone to who I have become. 

The second apartment I lived in, I couldn’t even pull into the lot. I saw the buildings from the road at a stop light. As I continued driving, all of the bad memories filled my head quicker than the good. I took a pit stop in my head at where the love between me and that ex faded and broke my spirit. How we fought and I felt helpless. I remembered trying to fix things and no matter what I did it was wrong. I lost the only friends I had because that relationship couldn’t be salvaged... but further down the road, I realized, had I not lived there, and that man not abandon me, I would never have met the souls I was so blessed to run into. Thoughts filled my head of a summer spent at the pool with new faces from other buildings in my complex. A simple throwing of a tennis ball between people helped hold conversations for hours along with cold drinks. I always believed things happened for a reason, it was that summer that showed me why! Those friends saved my life. They’ll just never understand. 

It was back across town that the third apartment I was supposed to live was located. I didn’t drive by or even visit that side of town due to plans (and good lord, the traffic). But I remembered the excitement I felt to finally stand up on my own again and pave my path in the direction it needed to go. It was just days after making my deposit on a nice one bedroom apartment, that I found out I had to move back to Ohio for family purposes. This thought just brings sadness and heartbreak when being so independent should bring excitement and content memories.

Driving around this city makes me miss being out of Ohio. It motivates me and pushes me to keep moving forward. I will always have a deep love for the place that taught me so much about who I really am and helped me grow. I will always have a place to rest my head, thanks to friends I look at more like family. I don’t know that I could ever repay anyone for what they did for me in my time there. Their friendship, their hospitality, or just their warm smiles to push out my burdens of loneliness. This will always be my other home. My southern comfort zone.