Hoes in different area codes

You leave home and you move on and you do the best you can

I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it

This brokenness inside me might start healing

Out here it’s like I’m someone else

I thought that maybe I could find myself

If I could walk around I swear I’ll leave

Won’t take nothing but a memory

From the house that built me

~Miranda Lambert

Personally, I’m much more of a Miranda Lambert than a Carrie Underwood.

I went home three weeks ago, and every time I do, I feel like I’m reclaiming a little piece of myself that I had left there. I don’t make it home as often as I’d like to, but every time I do, I feel myself, in a different way. The me that lives in Nebraska is responsible with a stable job who drives an air conditioned car and lives within a budget.

But the me in Washington is on vacation. I have no dog, no job, no car, no cable for those few days. I can just chum around with my brothers and chat with my mom and forget about the budget and eat out and don’t exercise. The entirety of my life being responsible has been spent here, but Washington holds my childhood, my adolescence, my college party years. It holds my brothers and my parents, my niece and my sister-in-law. It reminds me of who I was.

Sometimes I think I want to move back there. I miss the mountain and the cool breeze and the seafood and the places to shop and my family. Mostly my family. But if I lived there, I couldn’t be irresponsible Holly. It’s kind of nice, having two of me – one for there, one for here. One who lives within her means, and one who does whatever she wants. Those two can’t collide – they’re best left in their own zip codes. This way, they can both exist.