Hiraeth in Griffin, 1979 to 2023
- Feb 26
- 2 min read
From 1979 to 2023
I lived in Griffin, Georgia
and never belonged.
Forty-four years is long enough
to raise children,
to memorize the turn of every street,
to know which pecan tree drops first in October
and which church lets out earliest on Sunday.
Long enough to bury a dog,
to plant azaleas twice,
to learn the rhythm of cicadas
and the red dust that settles on porch rails
no matter how often you wipe it away.
Long enough to be known.
And yet—
I was always slightly mis-shelved.
Like a novel placed in Biography,
close enough to pass inspection
but never quite right.
I arrived a girl
with Virginia dusk in her bones
and Kentucky fields stitched into her hem.
I thought belonging was something you earned
by staying.
So I stayed.
I stood in grocery lines
and PTA meetings
and library corners
where children with sticky fingers
handed me their first library cards
and looked at me as if I held the keys to Narnia.
I learned names.
I remembered birthdays.
I smiled through seasons
that did not fit.
But belonging is not longevity.
It is not longevity.
It is not endurance.
You can endure a place
and still feel like a guest
waiting for someone to notice
your coat is still on.
There were evenings
when the Georgia air hung thick as syrup,
and I would step outside
just at dusk—
that holy Southern hour—
and listen for a whip-poor-will.
Griffin did not answer with that song.
It answered with traffic
and distant dogs
and the hum of someone else’s television
through an open window.
I told myself it was enough.
I told myself roots would grow
if I watered them long enough.
But some roots remember
other soil.
Forty-four years.
Two marriages.
Child growing tall.
Holidays set at the same table
until one chair emptied
and then another.
I built a life there.
Yes.
But I never quite built a self.
There is a difference.
Griffin was the address on my driver’s license.
It was the return label on envelopes.
It was the backdrop of my middle age.
But it was never the echo in my chest
when someone said the word home.
I do not hate it.
That is not the ache.
The ache is softer than anger.
It is the realization
that you can pour four decades into a place
and still feel
like the borrowed book
no one quite claims.
And now—
1979 to 2023
is a single line in the ledger of my life.
A long chapter.
Not the whole story.
I am fifty-three.
Old enough to say this without shame:
Staying did not make it mine.
And leaving
did not break me.
Perhaps hiraeth is not only longing
for somewhere you cannot return to.
Perhaps it is mourning
the years you tried
to love a place
into loving you back.
I lived in Griffin, Georgia
for forty-four years.
I did good there.
I gave there.
I endured there.
But I never belonged.
And maybe—
just maybe—
belonging was never meant
to be negotiated.
Maybe it is something that recognizes you
the way dusk recognizes the whip-poor-will—
without explanation.
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