Ten days of subconsciously bidding my hometown farewell
As I write this, I am sitting in my childhood bedroom getting ready to go to bed on what is to be my last night in my hometown before I return to LA to finish my time at college. After graduation, I’ll be moving to a new apartment and embarking on the beginnings of adulthood.
This is the first time that I’m leaving home without at least a rough estimate of the next time I’ll be back. In many ways, this was my farewell tour. But I didn’t realize what the trip was going to be until I was in the midst of it, becoming frazzled and sentimental while the days were whizzing past me.
Originally, I had planned on stopping home for a brief “hello” to go to a couple of family get-togethers that I didn’t want to miss out on. It was easy enough to do since classes were online, and I’d get the plus of seeing some friends that were returning home in the days following their own college graduations.
At the time that this trip was booked, my post-grad plans were still far in the distance. For all I knew, I’d be on the next flight back to New York the day after I got my diploma. But in the blink of an eye, my plans promptly solidified, and less than a week before I was to make my trip home I signed a lease on a new apartment locking me to LA for at least one more year.
The quick trip home suddenly had an entirely different tone surrounding it. Everything felt like a last, something I needed to do because I didn’t know when I’d get the chance to again. From going to the beach with my mom on a random Wednesday to picking up from specific restaurants for takeout, all of my actions had an unintended weight behind them. This weight also transferred over to the topic of discussion with friends, neighbors, and extended family. No matter how many times I was asked, I could never come up with an answer to “When are you home next?” without stuttering and fumbling over my words. The truth was, I had no idea. I couldn’t give a definite answer because I had no clue what my future responsibilities would look like. Would I have a job that needed me to come in every single day? Would I be working remotely with the freedom to complete my tasks from anywhere in the country? Or would I have a longer-than-some job search, with little responsibilities and therefore the ability to be anywhere I wanted?
This concept put directly in front of me how uncertain one’s (especially an adult’s) future is. From the age of five, I have been bound to the stringent academic calendar: September — June requiring my presence and diligence, with July — August at my disposal to do whatever I wanted. Suddenly, that schedule that had kept me on a certain trajectory for basically my whole life disappeared into thin air. My time would soon be determined by some other outside force — that of my employer — and I would have to relearn how to organize my days, weeks, months, and possibly years.
This train of thought was at the base of everything I did at home for the last ten days. Determined to not waste a single moment, I wanted to squeeze every last bit of enjoyment out of my little town before it was time to say my goodbyes. And this worked for most of my trip. I saw friends, spent quality time with my parents and extended family, and also got some much-needed relaxation in solitude. I was enjoying my time but was also ready and excited to return to LA, looking forward to what was to come.
That was until this morning, when I woke up with an indescribable tightness in my chest. I tried to ignore it, venturing out to get my mom and me our morning matchas before we went to get our nails done, but the feeling persisted during all of it. By mid-afternoon, I was breathing heavily, feeling like my brain was shaking inside of my head, unable to fully focus on the road as I was doing the same drive down my street I’d done my whole life.
I was confused. I was frustrated. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this many physical symptoms of anxiety. I felt like I was wasting what was supposed to be a joy-filled last day in my hometown. Instead, I was too busy trying to keep myself from a complete breakdown to enjoy anything.
I tried laying outside. I tried doing yoga. I tried writing. I tried jumping on my mini-trampoline my mom and I had just pulled from the attic. I tried any self-care remedy I could think of, but nothing was helping. Trying to talk about it was making it worse because I couldn’t accurately articulate the thoughts racing through my mind.
My head was pounding and the thoughts felt like they were on a never-ending loop. That was until my next-door neighbor randomly stopped by to give me a graduation present and see me off before I was to head back. We’re relatively close with her, some would say closer than most neighbors, but we definitely used to see each other more often. I spent many summer days in her pool before my family got one of our own, and many stressful middle school nights at her kitchen table as her boyfriend tried to show me easier ways to complete my algebra homework. She, my mom, and I talked for over an hour in our kitchen about nothing and everything, catching up on neighborhood gossip and each of us taking turns disclosing personal stories or information the others hadn’t heard over the years.
For some reason, and I still haven’t figured out why, that conversation seemed to have loosened up the tightness in my chest. All I can come up with right now is that it was very comforting to see her and talk to her, and for her to see more directly how I’d grown over the years. After she left, I opened the card she gave me, and saw written inside:
“I can’t believe you’re all grown up!”
And I realized that I guess I can’t, either. No matter how excited I say I am for the future, or how much I have to look forward to, or how many times I say I can’t wait to leave, a piece of me will always lie in my hometown. I was fortunate enough to grow up in an enticing and ever-changing town in a wonderful state, but those qualities make it that much harder to leave. When I have distance from home, I forget the hold it has on me, but coming back to it toes the line of Stockholm Syndrome, every time forgetting the negatives I so quickly list off in my head when back in LA. This is a feeling that I’d recognized in my early years of college but was amplified by the pressure of “lasts” this specific trip brought with it.
While I don’t know when I will be returning next, I know I will at some point, and I know that I always carry a little bit of home with me wherever I go. If anything else, my Long Island accent will always give me away.
