Bloodbuzz, Ohio taunts my inner fear demon.

I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of beesI never married, but Ohio don't remember me
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about love when I thought about home
The floors are falling out from everybody I know
           ─ The National

Continuing my obsession with The National, I'm going to start this by casually dropping off the latest song that's wormed its way into my ear and refused to budge.



Bit of a strange video, but it's always the lyrics that draw me into pretty much every song I fall in love with. With the holidays and everything going on over the past month, I've found myself thinking about Ohio quite a lot. On the best of days, my feelings about Ohio range from a vague affection to a mocking dislike, on the worst.... well, let's just say the word choices are rarely what anyone could call "nice".

I left Ohio for good in August 2006, and it was one of the happiest days of my life. Sure, I've returned a number of times for visits over the past few years, some extended and some frighteningly brief. But I go with the intention of leaving. I have a habit, still, of calling Ohio home because I'm still in college mode half the time, but it really isn't and (most importantly) I don't want it to be. Regardless, people that I love live there and that binds me to it. I can sometimes almost physically feel the connections tethering me to the land - as if a few strong yanks might be all it takes to pull me back, willingness be damned.

And that is certainly a fear I entertain from time to time. Having to return to the place where I unloaded all of the bitterness, sadness, frustrations and fears of my youth so I could move on and be happy in another place... how could I even begin to deal with that? And it's all purely selfish, but I think in this case selfishness is necessary. Selfishness is what got me out of there in the first place, and that's something I could not and would not ever apologize for. I think, perhaps, what I fear most is all those people who continually spout the adage that everyone always comes back will be right.

Even if it's a highly implausible notion, fears aren't usually logical or rational, and that's certainly one of my deepest - right there next to becoming my mother (and who isn't afraid of THAT?).

Oh god. I completely had a different intention for this post than to whine about how much I despise my home state. And, of course, any of those plans have been totally wiped from my memory. Maybe it's all the snow... C'est la vie! This is likely not getting a facebook repost...