I've even raped and killed a mountain panda in the hills of Shaanxi.

An unpleasant feeling is a wave of melancholy nearly crushing you when you realize you can't go home again, because your parents sold your home and moved away. You can't take a machete to cut down the brambles of blackberries covering everything, sweat on your lip, as you conquer the backyard. I had never felt this homesick before, but Tuesday and Wednesday morning I nearly cried about it. Hell, I went to boarding school at 16 to get away from all that crap, the unbearable heat and light and humidity and hurricanes, and I don't think many other people were less homesick than I was back then.

When my mom moved herself and her remaining children to Denver, and when I went to see them, it felt like that was home. It was nothing like where I grew up, nothing like that house where we all grew up, including my mother, but the family all being together was totally enough for me. I've never really been a very sentimental or nostalgic type for things or places, only poeople. But maybe going to Virginia where they have 20' magnolia trees pulled something out of me.

Anyone else have a demolished place they can't go back to?