I left North Carolina when I was 18 and never got much of a chance to go back. I visited, sure, but everybody knows it’s not the same. It’s true that you can’t really go back, and even more true when your parents don’t live there anymore. And if your old friends’ parents don’t live there anymore either? Well, just forget it. Even if you do go back, there’s nowhere to go.
This is the odd plight of military brats around the world. Thrown together as kids in new schools in new towns every few years, we made tight bonds fast. We understood the fears, we accepted the difficulties, we embraced others like us and were meaner than we should’ve been to those who weren’t. We soaked in the sun on the Carolina coast and turned up the music on our boom boxes; we laid by the pool, slathered with baby oil, and bared our souls in the hot sun; we stayed out as late as we possibly could and laughed our heads off at every opportunity. It wasn’t all funny. We had all sorts of issues in our crowd: binge-drinking, drugs, pregnancy, and eating disorders all reared their ugly heads. But we stood strong. We held hands. We talked late into the night. We cried the tears that only BFFs can cry for one another. We made it through.
I moved away a week after graduation and over the next few years I fell in love with New England. If I had time off, that’s where I wanted to spend it. Most of my southern friends’ parents relocated, and I lost touch with many of them. A few of us hung in there, some for years even, but after six moves I eventually lost track of most of them.
And then came Facebook. I can’t tell you how nostalgic it’s made me to be reminded of those times at the beach. It’s an entire chapter of my life that feels lost, sometimes, because I didn’t go back and it feels like it just ended, rather abruptly. But it’s not lost. Not at all. And in case I thought it was, my friends have old pictures to prove it.
I just hope they don’t post all of them!
