home

 

i got stuck at home. 

not really stuck. there was no physical sticking or even physical roadblocks to my departure. i just went to leave and something in my brain or heart or stomach or feet said, "nope. not gonna happen." 

 i think it's because home is so comforting. there are snacks here - not just food. snacks. you can hear birds. there is natural sunlight streaming through the windows. whenever i come home, i feel like a foreign exchange student or like i'm visiting a museum. i wander through the house while my parents are at work and i go through the drawers. i look through old pictures, rediscover things in my room that i tucked away. i wear whatever left-over clothes are in my closet, usually things from ninth or tenth grade. i sleep in my grandma's old night shirts. i lay on my parents bed, i lay on the living room floor, i poke around in the garage and look at my old girl scout sit-upon. i test out the stilts in the garage until one grazes my face and i notice a massive dead spider. it feels like a bit of a time warp. i love coming home because i know this place. or i knew this place. 

if i come home for a short period of time, everything is perfect. i allow myself to have the perfect harrisburg weekend. ciders at mcgraths, okini for dinner, neato for lunch, thrifting at all my local haunts, soothing trips up and down the clean aisles of target, walking the dog with my mom, drinking wine over dinner, talking on the back porch, browsing books at midtown scholar, going to the drive-in or old west shore theater, seeing familiar faces. and then i leave, and my perfect notion of my hometown remains in tact. forty-eight hours in the perfect amount of time to confirm my idealized version of home. 

but if i stay longer than that, little bumps start to surface in my smooth memory of home. i find old papers from high school, whining about how little there is to do in harrisburg and how none of my friends like me. i bend down to pick up stationary at marshall's and am hit with a flash of 'what am i doing here? why am i buying this?'. i pull into the driveway and discover that not only is my front door locked, but i no longer have a key. 

when i told my dad about being locked out and lamented not having a key he jokingly responded, "that's because you don't live here anymore." and it's true. i'm a visitor now. 

recently i've been giving a lot of thought to the idea that choosing one thing, does not necessarily mean rejecting another. by choosing to live in philadelphia post-grad, it's not because i'm turning my back on harrisburg or dismissing it. i'm just choosing philadelphia. that's it. simple. but there's a guilt that comes along with it. am i abandoning my hometown? my life at home is so good - can't i just keep living that? i know if i stayed in harrisburg, i would get bored. i would be trying to recreate the past and it would be sad and never quite the same. i might start to loathe my hometown. i am constantly torn between wanting to pursue things in the wider world and wanting to stay and give back to my hometown and make it a good place to be. i would also be a big fish in a small pond, which is appealing at times. 

post-grad life is a lot of limbo time. i don't want to stay here but i don't want to leave and the troubling part isn't my indecision, but my inability to articulate why.