Started this at 4. It's 4:48, and I'm still typing.
I'm trying to overcome my writers block.

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I turned 17 that winter. December 21st, 2011. Since my birthday was so close to Christmas, my parents usually just lumped both occasions together. I got two things that day: a remastered vinyl record of Metallica’s Ride the Lightning, and a pair of audio headphones for my record player. It was that same day that they decided to tell me the news. While I was still riding high on the wave of excitement the two gifts had given me, they broke it to me straight.

We were moving.

Not just across the street, or to another city in the state, but to Washington. About 70 miles north of Seattle, to a sound even I had never heard of.

My parents had both gotten jobs at this big company based in Seattle that did something important. I was never quite told what, but what little snippets I did catch on my way past their room told me it had something to do with overseas production of consumer goods like furniture.

I can’t say I was mad at them, or angry that they hadn’t broken it to me easier, but I was still bothered. The house we were moving into wasn’t as big as this one. Maybe a third of the size, and what bothered me is that I had to leave so much of what I had accumulated behind. To be perfectly honest, although much of the stuff I had in my room had no real monetary value, I still felt like I should hold onto it because it meant something to me, like it was some sort of trigger for memories I had with the people I knew, or something that held a connection to some point in history that I felt was significant. It was hard, but I managed to whittle down everything I had into three large boxes with my name on them. It wasn’t really hard to leave. The town I lived in was a place that didn’t hold much in the ways of outward opportunities. I noticed an odd tendency that if you weren’t planning to go work at a factory in the city, that people would see you as ‘strange’ or some other title. That may have been the reason my parents had wanted us to get out; because the city seemed like a snare of unsuccessfulness, ready to trap you in its industrial maw.

We passed by the sign in our new home on January 15th. Taugahannock Sound, Washington. Population: 3000. Better make it 3003, now that we were there. The town wasn’t large at all. It was as if the town had been established, then a blind man came and established a second town within the first. There was two of everything as you drove down the main thoroughfare. You could tell that it was originally an old fishing community, built in the mid 1800s after the civil war, but it now had a mixture of fishing and logging to support it. As we drove in, a soft fog covered the mountains surrounding it all, as if we were cut off and isolated from the rest of the state, or even the world itself. A fair drive on past the town, along a ridge road, and we finally reached our house. It was an old lighthouse. I studied it for a few minutes after stepping out of the car, my shoes crunching the gravel drive softly. It was old and weathered, and looked as if it had seen more than its fair share of ships and storms, and it possessed this air as if it had spectacular tales sealed up within its bricks.

My room was on the second floor of the house, and it was the only one looking out over the sea. I looked over the ancient plaster walls and sighed. I lied down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, not entirely sure how to feel about this new place, this new room, this new world I suddenly occupied. I felt jumbled up inside.

The next week my parents declared that we were finally ‘moved in’ and suggested I go down into town and look around. I walked. There wasn’t much to look around at. I loved history, but being suddenly forced into this town where I felt like I lived in an old oil painting just didn’t feel right, like I was a part of history that didn’t fit. I smiled and was nice to the folks, telling them how my family had just moved into the old lighthouse and were just finding out where things were. And the people were nice. They chatted and did their best to make me feel alright, and to a certain extent, I did, but at the same time something told me I didn’t. I squished that feeling down within me and just smiled.

My parents started work a week later. I spent a lot of time milling about the house, looking in nooks and crannies, and climbing up into the old lighthouse. I had spent the afternoon listening to my new record over again, letting myself slip away amongst the power and flow of the guitar chords when my parents called me for dinner. We ate relatively quietly until my father finally spoke up. He told me that they both were assigned to the same project, and would be overseas for a month, maybe two. I nearly choked, but just took a swig of water and kept right on listening. They said I was in charge, and that they had told the company about how I would be at home by myself, so they had given my parents something of a house sitter to look after me and the place.
I stopped chewing and looked at them.
“…Given?”
My mother nodded. I looked to my father, who nodded as well. They said they’d tell me after dinner.