Home
Over the summer, I babysat for my aunt three or four days a week for a couple weeks before I left for California. The way the schedule worked out was kind of perfect for me--it allowed me to have time to myself but also allowed me time to go up to New Jersey to spend time with Max and his family on the weekends, listening to the same strand of music from my playlist on spotify and memorizing the long line of pine trees I would see in the last twenty minutes or so before I got to his house.
On some days when I didn't have to babysit, I would stay at home and watch TV, look restlessly for jobs on my computer when I was feeling productive, and freely cook food for myself in a house so familiarly, comfortably empty because my mom was always working during the day. I had a car of my own, and it was a stick shift I had learned slowly and restlessly how to drive in a few weeks over the summer and fall of senior year, and I was talking regularly to my dad and it made me nervous when Max didn't text me back even if I was at a baseball game with my mom and grandfather, or something that should have been equally distracting.
It's weird how far away these memories feel to me now. Maybe it's because for the first time I'm allowing myself time to think about home in a way that isn't negative, or in a way that doesn't just involve memories of my restless desire to get away, far away, from everything that I knew.
I remember one day when I was driving my two youngest twin cousins, Paige and Teagan, to my grandparents' house, and had left my most recent library book, Fight Club, in the back seat. The front seat was empty, and so I had clear hearing of the conversation between the twins in the backseat. I didn't often listen to closely to their chatter, but in this instance I listened, and heard something I won't ever forget.
"No, Teagan," Paige said quietly. "It says, 'the first rule about fight club, is that you don't talk about fight club." I know it's hard to imagine the major humor in this situation, but just imagine this well-known phrase coming from the mouth of a six year old, you know, in that way that six year olds still need to pause between each word as they carefully decipher the next one, and it was in the gentle babyish voice of Paige, with her multiple lisps at once and with confident ignorance of what she was reading. I had to hold back my laughs, but at the same time realized the just kind of absolute absurd beauty of a moment like that--maybe I was tired from getting up early and stressed about leaving so soon and confused about how I was supposed to leave Max for California, but in that moment of hearing Paige read from Fight Club, I was glad to not be anywhere else.
Maybe I'm in a period of seeing home through rose-colored glasses right now, because I've hit some sort of sweet spot of being away for long enough to remember things fondly. Or maybe having Max here jump started some sort of missing home process that I didn't truly realize until he was gone. But writing about the wine bar in Hampden, and remembering how I went alone to Dangerously Delicious and got a piece of pie and read from my long list of email subscriptions, and thinking about what it felt like to volunteer at the MDSPCA for a whole semester and contemplating when would be the appropriate time to change my license from Maryland to California makes me immensely sad in a way I never really thought that I would feel. I don't want to move back home, but my life out here has been unstable and unsure enough for long enough that I miss the confidence and companionship I had with my house and my hometown.
I remember what it felt like to get angrier by the day and to feel as if time was standing still and moving past me, all at the same time. I remember how useless I would often feel at home, watching my friends on social media and pretending I had things to do, people to see, places I could be confident would make my life interesting, just like they did. I remember how much I prayed for something to happen to me, something big, something interesting, and how I wanted so desperately to get away from home after graduation, how I knew confidently with every part of me that if I too quickly spent too much time in my hometown, it would swallow me up like it seemed to do to everyone else, making them focus on things and people and ideas that weren't as big, weren't as moving, weren't as unusual as all the things I had hoped for myself. And when Bob died in June, I heard more tears in my mom's voice as she told me over the phone than I shed on my own. I had taken him to the vet and held him on my lap knowing it was the last time. It was only fitting that his and my life together would end conveniently before I left to begin something new. I was ready to leave everything behind and to stop pretending I would even want to look back.
But here, in California, where every day is new and dependent on what I decide to do and what conversations I decide to have; where I have to really take on my own future for the first time in my life if I want to be successful, I remember what it was like to just sit on my couch with my mom and watch our favorite reality TV shows. I remember what it was like to not have to feel awkward about eating multiple things for breakfast, or to cook pasta sides with extra cheddar cheese to add flavor, and to not worry about dishes, or if I was being too loud or overstepping my boundaries. I remember what it was like to drink wine with Max in my bedroom, and to go out with his friends to bars in Federal Hill I had been to a thousand times, and to sleep on a mattress with no sheets and no pillow in his friend Joe's dorm room, and to feel like that was so much more than enough, to feel like I didn't really want to be anywhere else than in that moment. I remember what it felt like to have Max here, and to have him realize that I was acting weird and to feel like it was all my fault, like I wasn't who I had been when we met, and like I wished I could change and be different and not need this ridiculous period of confusion in order to figure out my own life. I remember knowing California was always on the horizon, but still being able to live my life in the present, without constant confusion about who I was and what I wanted and where I was going.
Everything in my life is kind of turned upside down right now, and I don't know what things I can, or honestly, even want to do about it. I came out here to find myself, and instead, I'm only finding that I have no idea who I am, or who I want to be. I just know that right now, I'm not who I wanted to be.
In the couple of ultra-serious conversations Max and I had while he was here, he constantly approached this theme of how I was choosing California over him, wondering how it was possible for me to love a place more than I loved him, a person. I think at the time he wasn't trying to hurt me, but as I restlessly tried to explain how unfair it was for him to say that, I realized just how serious me coming to California was becoming. I don't think I could ever choose a place over a person, but I know for sure that I can't force myself to go to a place where I'm not meant to be, just because a certain person is there. I wish I didn't have this feeling of restlessness, this satisfaction from living in a place that's mentioned on the internet all the time. I wish I didn't feel like I want to get far away from any and all emotional relationships while at the same time wanting to go home and adopt a dog and sleep in my own bed, a place where I feel like I don't have to feel guilty for making my own. I wish I hadn't been naive enough to assume that simply moving from one place to another would make things any clearer, would make hard decisions any easier to make. I wish feelings and emotions didn't change and stay the same, all at once.
On some days when I didn't have to babysit, I would stay at home and watch TV, look restlessly for jobs on my computer when I was feeling productive, and freely cook food for myself in a house so familiarly, comfortably empty because my mom was always working during the day. I had a car of my own, and it was a stick shift I had learned slowly and restlessly how to drive in a few weeks over the summer and fall of senior year, and I was talking regularly to my dad and it made me nervous when Max didn't text me back even if I was at a baseball game with my mom and grandfather, or something that should have been equally distracting.
It's weird how far away these memories feel to me now. Maybe it's because for the first time I'm allowing myself time to think about home in a way that isn't negative, or in a way that doesn't just involve memories of my restless desire to get away, far away, from everything that I knew.
I remember one day when I was driving my two youngest twin cousins, Paige and Teagan, to my grandparents' house, and had left my most recent library book, Fight Club, in the back seat. The front seat was empty, and so I had clear hearing of the conversation between the twins in the backseat. I didn't often listen to closely to their chatter, but in this instance I listened, and heard something I won't ever forget.
"No, Teagan," Paige said quietly. "It says, 'the first rule about fight club, is that you don't talk about fight club." I know it's hard to imagine the major humor in this situation, but just imagine this well-known phrase coming from the mouth of a six year old, you know, in that way that six year olds still need to pause between each word as they carefully decipher the next one, and it was in the gentle babyish voice of Paige, with her multiple lisps at once and with confident ignorance of what she was reading. I had to hold back my laughs, but at the same time realized the just kind of absolute absurd beauty of a moment like that--maybe I was tired from getting up early and stressed about leaving so soon and confused about how I was supposed to leave Max for California, but in that moment of hearing Paige read from Fight Club, I was glad to not be anywhere else.
Maybe I'm in a period of seeing home through rose-colored glasses right now, because I've hit some sort of sweet spot of being away for long enough to remember things fondly. Or maybe having Max here jump started some sort of missing home process that I didn't truly realize until he was gone. But writing about the wine bar in Hampden, and remembering how I went alone to Dangerously Delicious and got a piece of pie and read from my long list of email subscriptions, and thinking about what it felt like to volunteer at the MDSPCA for a whole semester and contemplating when would be the appropriate time to change my license from Maryland to California makes me immensely sad in a way I never really thought that I would feel. I don't want to move back home, but my life out here has been unstable and unsure enough for long enough that I miss the confidence and companionship I had with my house and my hometown.
I remember what it felt like to get angrier by the day and to feel as if time was standing still and moving past me, all at the same time. I remember how useless I would often feel at home, watching my friends on social media and pretending I had things to do, people to see, places I could be confident would make my life interesting, just like they did. I remember how much I prayed for something to happen to me, something big, something interesting, and how I wanted so desperately to get away from home after graduation, how I knew confidently with every part of me that if I too quickly spent too much time in my hometown, it would swallow me up like it seemed to do to everyone else, making them focus on things and people and ideas that weren't as big, weren't as moving, weren't as unusual as all the things I had hoped for myself. And when Bob died in June, I heard more tears in my mom's voice as she told me over the phone than I shed on my own. I had taken him to the vet and held him on my lap knowing it was the last time. It was only fitting that his and my life together would end conveniently before I left to begin something new. I was ready to leave everything behind and to stop pretending I would even want to look back.
But here, in California, where every day is new and dependent on what I decide to do and what conversations I decide to have; where I have to really take on my own future for the first time in my life if I want to be successful, I remember what it was like to just sit on my couch with my mom and watch our favorite reality TV shows. I remember what it was like to not have to feel awkward about eating multiple things for breakfast, or to cook pasta sides with extra cheddar cheese to add flavor, and to not worry about dishes, or if I was being too loud or overstepping my boundaries. I remember what it was like to drink wine with Max in my bedroom, and to go out with his friends to bars in Federal Hill I had been to a thousand times, and to sleep on a mattress with no sheets and no pillow in his friend Joe's dorm room, and to feel like that was so much more than enough, to feel like I didn't really want to be anywhere else than in that moment. I remember what it felt like to have Max here, and to have him realize that I was acting weird and to feel like it was all my fault, like I wasn't who I had been when we met, and like I wished I could change and be different and not need this ridiculous period of confusion in order to figure out my own life. I remember knowing California was always on the horizon, but still being able to live my life in the present, without constant confusion about who I was and what I wanted and where I was going.
Everything in my life is kind of turned upside down right now, and I don't know what things I can, or honestly, even want to do about it. I came out here to find myself, and instead, I'm only finding that I have no idea who I am, or who I want to be. I just know that right now, I'm not who I wanted to be.
In the couple of ultra-serious conversations Max and I had while he was here, he constantly approached this theme of how I was choosing California over him, wondering how it was possible for me to love a place more than I loved him, a person. I think at the time he wasn't trying to hurt me, but as I restlessly tried to explain how unfair it was for him to say that, I realized just how serious me coming to California was becoming. I don't think I could ever choose a place over a person, but I know for sure that I can't force myself to go to a place where I'm not meant to be, just because a certain person is there. I wish I didn't have this feeling of restlessness, this satisfaction from living in a place that's mentioned on the internet all the time. I wish I didn't feel like I want to get far away from any and all emotional relationships while at the same time wanting to go home and adopt a dog and sleep in my own bed, a place where I feel like I don't have to feel guilty for making my own. I wish I hadn't been naive enough to assume that simply moving from one place to another would make things any clearer, would make hard decisions any easier to make. I wish feelings and emotions didn't change and stay the same, all at once.
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