Although Thomas Wolfe warned You Can’t Go Home Again, I did.
After spending most of my childhood, teenage years, and young adult years in Virginia, I married and moved to Tampa, Florida in 1983. Twenty-three years later, in 2006, I returned to Virginia. My parents still live here, as does my only sibling, as does my father’s mother, 98, and my father’s stepmother, 94.
Why I came, what I found, what happened, and what I learned, well, that could fill a blog.
What I didn’t expect was The Rule. I hadn’t sensed its presence when I lived here before. But I had unconsciously followed it.
After my former husband and I ended our marriage in 1999, I spent the next seven years opening myself to what had happened. I began by never wanting to feel, or cause, such pain again.
I expected to bring my new-found, hard-won Tampa openness with me to my new-old home.
It took me until April 2008 to realize The Rule was robbing me of my heart, my hope, my very vitality.
The Rule: No revealing.
No revealing of feelings, particularly passions, particularly truths, by words, gestures, facial expressions, even clothing.
Enforcement? Change of subject, covert expectations of compliance ("Well, you’re certainly excited about that, aren’t you?"), overt expectations of compliance ("Calm down!), teasing, ridicule, shunning, random indignities, group ridicule, group non-compliance, group gang-up (reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery).
I see now, of course, that The Rule is a social norm of my regional culture, as well as of my family. I unconsciously followed it for decades.
I’m a fan of norms. I like the one about the other guy stopping at his red light when my light is green.
I’m a fan of privacy. I like to choose what I reveal to whom and when.
I’m not a fan of secretiveness, hiding, untruths, lying. Not to myself, not to me by others, not imposed on me by others.
I’m not a fan of closed curtains.
I cannot, nor would I consider it either my right or my prerogative, to choose for others what they keep private or secret.
For me, on The Anne Show, the curtains are open.
I feel full of heart, hope, and vitality.
