I think quite a bit about what it's like to grow up in a small place. The expectations people you know place on you, and the way in which all your actions have these unforeseen consequences.
It's a bit like a weird cross between the butterfly effect and Chinese whispers. Every time you bump into someone in the street it can lead to another person you know repeating the things you've said, or done, back to you through the filter of half a dozen conversations.
To be completely honest I got the hell away from that kind of place pretty much as soon as I was able, but the memory of being an unwitting part of a larger whole, an inseparable part, remains acute. And it's a strange memory because while I'd like to think that I was at the centre of that community, the truth is that circumstances left us at the periphery.
Regardless, if you've ever been really close to a group of people, you'll know what I mean when I say that angst of separation from a community abides. Whether that community is an extended family, formerly unknown kith you tie yourself to in a big city, or as simple as the guys you regularly have a beer with, losing that tether to a wider group is never a gentle transition.
The difference between my situation and that of someone who is forced into separation is that I chose to walk away from my hometown. And we all own our choices, right?
I suppose the answer to that one is, 'usually'.
What makes me think about the need to leave though is that my gut told me I had no other real choice. If I was to ever achieve any kind of happiness, then escape was the only other option. It was a simple as stay and never grow, or leave always wondering about what could have been.
And wonder I do.
I wonder mostly about the people I've left behind over the fifteen years of wandering, and if they really understand why it was that I was driven to keep moving. I wonder if they truly understand what it was I was doing 'out there'. Hell, I wonder if I knew exactly what it was I looked for.
But in a way, that's the part of the human psyche we all struggle with, the uncertainty that our actions are taking us away from the comfortable and known into territory dangerous and disconcerting. There's times though when change is the only thing we want to embrace, times when the stupor of day to day life threatens to collapse you beneath it's weight. Times when just the act of acting out a life you feel you've never wanted stands astride of you, pushes down on your chest, suffocating.
I saw that fate waiting for me at nineteen, bailed, and never looked back. Or never until very recently I suppose. Why in the heck else would I leave the much bigger city for Wellington?
Even then, it's choice I made of my own volition, because my need to return to New Zealand finally far outweighed the desire to stay away.
And that's the core of the issue I suppose, the way in which so many opposing forces pull us to and from the places we see ourselves in, and the repercussions that follow. I've seen times when others I know have had to make that decision in circumstances far more fraught than 'moving out of home', times when the separation is more agony than angst.
Surely they make these decisions for reasons their own though? It doesn't make the space they leave behind in the community they've separated themselves from any less tangible, be that community kith or kin, but it says something about the gravity that has drawn them away from that place.
It also doesn't make the Chinese-butterfly-whispers-effect any easier for the departed, but reasoned understanding of what it was that drew people out of your circle, or more precisely what it was that prevented them from staying, would provide comfort to both you and them?
Because maybe, just maybe, a reason can fill the space they left. A reason that can in time squeezed out when you welcome them back. Because if an empty space is there, then surely it means the community you both know all too well is surely missing them, and wants them back?
And because if you know they belong where an emptiness crouches, then perhaps you should let their place itself travel with them, because to do otherwise would be to lie to both yourself, and them.