Houston (personal demons)

We were on a brief respite in Houston for the holiday, visiting my mother and step-dad.

I don't like Houston...at all. I really try to figure out my negative feelings for my hometown. I mean, I was born there and spent the majority of my first 18 years there. Six years ago mom bought a brand new house built only three blocks away from the house I grew up in. It's really weird because 10 years after the divorce and visiting mom in an apartment all that time...it's like I'm now 'going home'. And I don't have great memories of home.

I grew up around a LOT of falseness and fakery. Like mom and dad only pretending to get along at church while home life was frigid and stale. Like the blatant "keeping up with the Joneses" culture that plagues the suburbs I dwelled in. Like how career & job equals identity. Like how consumerism is the battle cry of big city suburbs.

I assume Houston is where my character was built. So how come I did not embrace this big city arrogance growing up? I don't know, because I had opportunity. I rebelled against a lot of things. Maybe this is one of them. Maybe my current surroundings is a backlash from my childhood surroundings.

I find little peace at mom's. If I go outside to escape the noise of TV and chitchat, I get the subtle roar of traffic from three nearby thoroughfares.

The suburbs has no natural nature. Everything is artificial and fake. Sodded grass is the only escape from concrete (and I made damn good money mowing that sod as a teen back in the mid '80s. I forget that I had an entrepreneurial background). I guess my current neighborhood in the mother city is no different...except nobody can afford or cares to keep up their lawn and property.

I should honor my parents and all that jazz. But I would have had more of a holiday at home eating thanksgiving dinner with Obi-Wan and the Sanfords.