Connection

After you graduate, connections with your home town seem to slowly die off. At first, you have major connections-maybe it's the mutual hometown of you and a high school girlfriend, you are still financially dependant on your parents and therefore obliged to return at least monthly. Maybe you still have some pretty close friends that stayed or come back a lot. You miss your mom's cooking. You have some underclassman friends. Whatever it may be, you initially have a lot of connections.

As the years progress, those connections are either severed by breakups or friendships ending in fights. They are severed by people that used to be at home, moving to far away lands. Maybe your brothers or sisters go off to college. More often though, they just fade. Friendships don't end in meltdowns, even breakups are sometimes rekindled. But they just fade. The once a week phone call turns into once every ten days. Soon it's once a month. Eventually it's around the holidays. Finally, maybe the calls just come at Christmas when everyone is home for a while. Eventually your connections are few and far between.

Right now, I feel like my connections are basically gone. Both brothers have left the nest. The three people I would ever call were I to come back home and want to hang out are now in South Korea, Russia, and one is living with a guy in a town a few miles away. The last time I was in Athens I had lunch with one friend, who I don't think will be there much longer. Another friend is leaving the town for a job in just a couple of weeks. My dad works for Delta; were they to go under I fully believe my parents would sell the house and get out of town for good. The Evan-Atlanta connection is fading. Hopefully my parents will be here for a few more years, but really, there's not a whole lot more left here. Couple of kids in Atlanta, one in Augusta-but not really any in towns that I would've called "home" (being Athens and Atlanta). It's weird, but I believe Georgia is behind me. Time to put down some roots somewhere else. It's not sad. I don't want anyone to think that. It's just digging up and setting down somewhere else. Each summer that fades takes a few connections with it. Before you know it, I'll have kids and be living in some shady suburb. Hopefully that's a few years, and few more uprootings away, but who knows.