You can go back
It's just takes some time
I’m coming up on four years in New York, which will probably bear its own entry for all the wonderful things my time here has brought me, but before I was in New York, I spent a similar amount of time in New Orleans.
I arrived there intending to test out the waters on a three month lease and had so much fun I ended up staying for three years. A lot of really great people and things happened to me there, but I ultimately left on a downbeat when a relationship ended, and I’d stayed away until last weekend.
New Orleans is as good as advertised for all the reasons you’ve heard. The food, the music, the history, and the people. As soon as you understand that you’re welcome to visit, but not entitled to, the southern hospitality starts up faster than you can say y’all.
Despite all these good memories and reasons to visit, I’d stayed away because I felt like I wasn’t welcome, that I’d squandered my right to be there, and part of moving on was not looking back.
But it turns out you can go back again. It takes some time, and it looks a little different, but you can do it. The grass has grown back in some places and the paint has faded in others, but you still know the way.
Walking down the same streets and seeing familiar sights, you realize that the only thing that’s really changed is you and that if you could go back and undo the painful choices that are just as much a part of the mold as everything you got right the first time, you wouldn’t. Because then you wouldn’t be who or where you are today, in full appreciation of all the steps it took to get there.