"How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back?"

Today I went to my old high school. Climbing the dreadful stairs (for dreadful was the emotion they nearly always evoked) I realized it has been a year since I was a student there. So much has happened in this past year, though it feels like so little time has past. I am not the person I was then. I am aware of the pathetic overuse of that statement, but it is still true. I have changed, I just had not noticed until now. It's like having a child and not realizing that it is growing until you leave for a while and then come back to the surprising (yet logically obvious) realization that it has grown. It was encouraging to know I have changed, I was not whom I wished to be then, and yet it was strange. I felt almost as if a reintroduction was needed. Anyway, I was glad to know it, I so dearly want to change, to be more. I still have such a painfully long way to go.
Though most of the change that has occurred in my life has produced a favorable outcome, there is a thorn. I have always been a lonely person, and yet, the changes have taken me away from places of...well, place; where I belonged. Now, I am alone. Not really "alone," I have individuals, my "shield," and of course, God for communion, but I lack "place." Is that why I want to leave? Is that why I am struggling the way I am? Why I'm suddenly willing to forsake Independence?