On the road I wish I hadn't traveled....

There are very few places I've been in my life that I wouldn't want to go to again. I've basically fallen in love with just about every place I've ever lived or traveled to. With the exception of one place.

Minnesota.

I have never hated being in a place so intensely. There are a lot of reasons why, but I really didn't like living there. Not one bit. It's funny because I wanted to go to school there so badly and wound up hating nearly every second of my experience there. What's even more funny is that the year before, I lived in Canada and I didn't want to go there AT ALL yet fell all kinds of in love with that place and didn't want to leave. I remember sobbing when I drove back across the border to the States.

But beyond places I never want to return to, there are feelings and times that I have no interest in revisiting either. You know that feeling of invisibility you have in junior high? Unless you're a very (and I mean VERY) lucky child, you probably spent the majority of those years either trying to be seen or hoping to be invisible...maybe both at once. I know I did. No one wants to feel like people are staring past them.

Or the feeling of letting someone down for the first time? Really letting someone down. For me, I'm sure it was my parents that I let down. I wasn't the best kid. I gave my parents a hard time. I rebeled a little in high school and then went bonkers when I came home from Minnesota. I know it's not ME that's a let-down...it's some of my choices and actions. And it sucks when you finally realize what kind of a crappy kid you were for so many years. If only we could know at 15 what most of us come to know in our mid-20s.

Maybe one of the more gut-wrenching feelings is breaking someone's heart and, in an almost karmaic fashion, having yours broken in return. Ugh. I wonder if that's part of why my parents never really encouraged my siblings or me to date flippantly. It hurts when hearts get broken. The recovery takes longer than any other broken body part I can think of (granted, I've never broken anything more than a fingernail, so what do I know?) and it's a break that often sticks around for a long time. Maybe even forever. We try desperately to mask that pain, but it's a scar that will stick around and there's no telling how long.

So while I love to travel and visit new places and, more often than not, go back to many of those spots, there are certain places and feelings that are better left in the past, never to be visited again. Like Minnesota. Except that my best friend and her family just moved there. Crap.

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