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I grew up on an island in the Puget Sound that few people know of, it seems. I moved away when I was 13 for suburbia in Oregon. I've gone back a few times since, as we still have friends who live where I grew up, and sometimes we drive out to the island and look at our old house. I took my SO out there a couple years ago, so he could see the places I'd talked about, but one thing I realized on that trip was that the place in my head, the place I remember, no longer exists. Places aren't artifacts, and a place that truly lives never stays the same. When I moved there as a small child, it was a small, close-knit community based on farming, and now it is a bedroom community of Seattle.
I've never asked to see inside. I don't want to. I'm perfectly happy with my memories, especially since the last time I drove by, they had taken my mother's apple treees out. It isn't my house anymore, and I'd rather leave my memories unblemished by modern knowledge.
I still dream about that house nearly every night.
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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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