How to Return Home.

This song was written for a musical by the incredible team Kerrigan and Lowdermilk, and is referring to how one feel's going home for the first time during freshman year of college. I felt exactly this way then, I still feel the exact same way now, every time.  I think that anyone who has left home in search of something might agree with me:

Your bare feet sliding on the old wooden floorboards,

Home just as you left it but still you’re shaken,

Like walking into a museum somehow out of time.

It’s all the same except the girl in the hallway,

Where she’s been and who she will ripen into,

Your childhood’s on the other side of a sprawling divide… too wide.

Take a silent breath.

Hold in the change.

Tell yourself you still live here.

Take your bags upstairs.

It’s the only way you’ll get through today.

Count the hours.

Take a shower.

Wash yourself away.

The house is pulsing with an alien heartbeat,

Was it always here but you never listened?

It’s calling you to be the girl that you were way back then… again.

Put away your clothes, take it nice and slow.

Be their daughter.

Nothing’s harder

When nobody knows

How to return home.

How to return home

And how to survive,

There’s no written guidelines.

How to go back,

How to show up and unpack.

How to show up.

How to grow up.

How to take a breath.

You still share a name

But you’re not the same.

You don’t fight it.

You don’t hide it.

It’s a whole new game of how to return home.
(abridged)

I'm going back to Spokane for the first time since, er, (I don't actually recall) next week.  I'm already dreading the self righteous sixteen year old that will emerge from the tarmac at  GEG.  It's revertigo.  


PS:  Want to hear my fav B'way star, Laura Osnes' version?