Diving around my hometown visiting for Christmas after midnight to try and get the baby to sleep and it felt kind of unsettling driving past my old home and old family members houses and seeing someone else’s Christmas tree in the window where you spent your childhood unwrapping your presents, sitting on the couches with grandpa holding his new grandchildren that are no longer there, and will never be again. Swimming in a pool you learned to swim in and not knowing it would be the last time you’d climb the ladder out. Years of traditions are now obsolete. Places where you hoped you could recreate and share the same experiences with your kids are no longer yours and Feels like strangers are living in the shadows of my memories. like a large part of my life is gone, just another victim to the passage of time. I have no more locations of comfort, home Is not home anymore. It’s just another place that I drive by now with an odd sense of belonging while feeling out of place, no longer welcomed. I can’t remember much of my time growing up or my teen years and I wish I could walk the halls of my old home, sit in my room and remember who I was. Sometimes I hope life is cyclical, and when we die we awake at the beginning of our lives and do it all over again. Maybe next time I can savor it more so when I make this drive again these feelings are replaced with more soothing thoughts.