So here's what happened. I started thinking about how I'm going home this weekend. And then came the endless debative [is that even a word?] issue that I'm having right now: what the heck is home?
Definition
Home [noun]:
1: one's place of residence
2
: the social unit formed by a family living together
3:
a familiar or usual setting : congenial environment; also :the focus of one's domestic attention
4:
a place of origin; also : one's own country
So let's think about this. I was born in Queens. Lived in Bayside until I was four years old. Then I moved upstate to the middle of nowhere Duchess County, and that's where I grew up. When I was 18 I moved back down to Queens since I went to undergrad here, and I've been here ever since.
So let's see. Home was upstate. That's where my friends were, that's where my family is. But then we grew older and people moved away after we graduated to get jobs and go to grad school. Now I go home to see my parents, my sister, and my cat. My best friends are still up there, because they moved back and work there. But again, they have lives and jobs and I'll go up there and not even see them sometimes.
I felt that way the last time I went up there, in between classes ended and me starting this internship. This quote describes it precisely, it's from Garden State:
"You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know."
It makes me sad. Upstate is so different from the city. There's stars and people are a little nicer and drive a little slower and it's nice to just get away for the weekends. There's bonfires and carnivals and drive in movies. It's where my childhood was. I get fed there and my bedroom is there. I was there for a long time. Now its a ghostly place that I know all the roads to, it feels like. Even my parents got an apartment in Westchester so their commute to work wouldn't be so bad and are just keeping the house for weekends and summers. Soon enough I might not even have the house I grew up in anymore.
So by default if I lost that, then New York City would be my new home, right? This city that has my soul.
But I'm not sure if that's the case either. Maybe its because I've moved every year since I was 18. From one college housing place to the next. One apartment and then another. A school year ends, a lease ends, time to move. I have no permanent place. I get used to living somewhere and then it's like I have to leave. I was in undergrad for four years and that campus, that place was home. But then once you graduate you're gone.
Now I'm here when I feel with all of my being that I should've gone to California. And I have to constantly remind myself why I love this city. And the people I went to undergrad with also have real lives and jobs and we're just all growing up.
Everyone talks about home.
Home is where the heart is
Home is wherever I'm with you
Home is the sweetest word there is
Home is a feeling....
I guess I don't have that feeling. I just feel displaced.
No comments:
Post a Comment