Callin’ Baton Rouge

Reconnecting with old friends in Louisiana

Because sometimes a girl just needs her friends

**Side note: I like being called “girl.” I know a lot of women have issues with the word, and that is absolutely fair. For me however, it is a word reclaimed. My brain associates the word “girl” with being lighthearted and carefree, and I never got to have that time, and I want it back, dammit. So I call myself girl and I call some of my close friends girl and they call me girl and we are all okay with it and if you aren’t that is fine but don’t ask us to stop.**

I had a bad day last Friday. I was sad and confused and when I went for my walk down to my beach to try to cheer up all I could think was “I wish I could go away for a while.”

And then I thought: why don’t I?

When you’re sad and confused and maybe having a bit of an identity crisis, you want to be with the people who have known you the longest and know you best. The people who have seen the different stages of you and liked all of them along the way. The people who can tell what is just a phase and what is your true identity.

Now, contrary to popular belief, I have not found living in the Pacific Northwest to be a desolate, friendless wasteland full of icily polite people who don’t understand small talk. I mean, they are icily polite. They actually look kind of confused when you bubble away at them in casual social situations the way people do in the south. It’s cute; I like it.

But people are people and if you smile at them enough they’ll grow to like you so I’ve actually done okay on the friend front up here. But I’ve only been up here for eleven months, so all those friendships are, by default, new.

And I wanted an old friend. So I took the advice of the great Garth Brooks, and I called Baton Rouge.

I spent three days on the cross-country train trip of my dreams, then four days driving around southern Louisiana, from house to house and bar to bar, seeing old friends and reconnecting with my past. Because it truly is important to remember where you came from.

Now it’s Friday again, and I’m about to get on a plane, which is good because I am truly ready to go home.

I took a week, I got out of my head, I thought about who I am and who I was and who I will be, and I feel better.

I took a fucking vacation.

A REAL vacation, where I did what I needed to rest and recharge and now I’m strong and steady again.

Americans don’t really take those kinds of vacations. Americans get precious little time off, and they are loathe to waste it on self-care. Everyone I know either can’t afford to take a vacation at all, or they take the kind of vacations that are “experiences” where you try to cram as much life as possible into a few days and everyone winds up exhausted and cranky.

We should though. We COULD, if we would all just stand up for ourselves against the Corporate Overlords and their Political Puppets.

If we forced them to remember that “the people” are actual people, not just disposable cogs in their profit-machine.

I feel better. But everyone I love is unhappy.

And I am not okay with that.

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