It's been nearly 13 years since I left Phoenix and the home I grew up in. My parents and a lot of my crap still live in that house. I was luckier - or perhaps more determined - than many in my generation who had to move back in with mom and dad because of money or other difficulties. So I haven't lived there in more than a decade. Yet I am heading to Phoenix this weekend and am referring to the trip as going home.
Despite the bugs, humidity, bullshit, and tourist infestation, the DC area is my home. I've made a life here and am buying a house here. So why is going to Phoenix going home?
The house, the neighborhood, and the city have all changed immensely since I left. There is a familiarity, sure. But it's one that feels like some fuzzy memory or distorted dream - not like the place I spent my first 18 years that I knew so intimately. I love visiting Phoenix, seeing my parents and friends or hitting up my old haunts. But lately the visits are bittersweet. They serve as a reminder of the passage of time. And while high school was decidedly not the best 4 years of my life, there was this optimism about the future and what my life would be.
I realize 31 is young, and there is lots ahead for me. But many of the big questions are answered. I know who I am spending the rest of my life with. I know what I do for a living. I have a pretty solid idea of what my life will be (at least I hope I do). And going to Phoenix sometimes makes that growing pain very acute.
In college I used to laugh at the cliché "you can never go home again." I always thought, of course you can! I do it all the time. It wasn't until a few years ago that I realized how much wisdom there is in that hackneyed phrase. You can visit the physical place, but eventually, no matter what you call it, it won't feel like home. But there is some small part of me that still hopes it will. And I guess that part of me is the one that answers "home" when people ask where I'm going this weekend.
When the movie Garden State first came out, I watched it with a bunch of same-age buddies and loved it. A few weeks later, hanging with my mom and my sister on the couch, it happened to come on TV - I mentioned my budding love affair with them, we all watched it together, and, when it was over, my sister turned to me and asked if I had been on drugs when I saw it. HA! Maybe it was just the age at which I saw - that dramatic stage of being about to graduate with the whole world ahead of you - but I think your post perfectly encapsulates the feeling that movie gave me and is a much more personal take on the few lines from it that I haven't been able to get out of my head lately: "t's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist...Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."
ReplyDeleteAnyway, a very long winded way of saying I love this post :)
Thanks, Anonymous! I found Garden State so depressing, but I think it's because it rang so true for me. Thanks for commenting, and please keep reading!
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