It was always a strange thing, coming home. Coming home meant that you had, at what point, left it and, in doing so, irreversibly changed. How odd, then, to be able to return to a place that would always be anchored in your notion of the past. How could this place still be here, if the you that once lived here no longer existed?

Yet at the same time, in complete contradiction, seeing that said place had changed in your absence was nothing if not surreal.

so many poignant paragraphs about existence and time, i totally understand Dex's conflicting feelings. i've been driving around my hometown and my college town lately, and even the act of driving down a certain freeway on-ramp triggered memories of the past in that same exact location. it's such a weird feeling, especially contrasting all the change that's been made in my absence, eg. my hometown where there's been a lot of change and development. it feels familiar yet it feels so separate from me at the same time. i feel like i'm contained in the space between the unknown and the known, with grief and nostalgia at the core of it all.