There is a movie about where I grew up. Denzel Washington is a football coach and everyone speaks with an accent. The older people from my hometown are usually very interested in this movie taking place, however, the young people are usually not. While this is an oversimplification, perhaps this trend should symbolize something, although maybe it means nothing at all.

I remember when I moved there and I could feel excitement well up in my stomach, excitement for all of the possibilities a new city has to offer. There were many grocery stores, many museums and many people with whom I could make friends. And then the excitement for the novelty was replaced with the excitement of being a knowledgeable person about my home. I rely, still, on the fact that there is something about which I am truly an expert. I don’t have a driver’s license, but I can get around without any problems, and I like knowing everything. I know exactly which train line will get me where, which street I should take to get to where I need to go. The tourists are idiots, in comparison to me. 

But I think my expert-ness was more exciting before my friends moved away. It felt more collective, and now the city is my friend — which is an interesting relationship to have with a city.

Winter break was quiet. Home usually feels louder for me than Boston does. Everyone speaks to you. Or at least they wave. The buildings are all bright colors. Music is everywhere.  But this time, it was all very inward, very dark gray and navy. It was colder than it had been in the past. Most days, I took the bus and then the train to the library. Either that, or I walked around town until my calves ached. I listened to a lot of music. I did not feel that I spoke to many people I knew. I chatted with my brother about a girl he likes. Or liked, I don’t know. He changes his mind.

I went to the park to call my high school friend that I have been missing more than usual these days. He is doing well, in case you wanted to know. When I put down the phone, I remember feeling like it was the oldest I had ever felt in my entire life, with my calling old friends to catch up. I wondered how long it would take before I called people who occupied a space in a previous chapter, only for them to tell me that they fell, or were moving to the old folks’ home, or were about to have a grandkid. I promptly realized this thought was incredibly stupid because I am, in fact, very young and cool and will remain that way for a good while.

It made me wonder why it is that I come back. If there is something about the gray buses, the deciduous leaves and the smell of gasoline that makes me unable to remove this place from my soul. I remember thinking out loud one time, back when I was in high school, that I could inhale everything about where I lived like it were a cherry slushie, or a hard drug. I still feel that way, but now I think that I feel so strongly about my home more because of the city itself, not my friends in it.

I wonder what the required reading is for when your friends move away. Move away to good places where they will be well taken care of and do amazing things. Nothing is truly sad about it, but nothing is quite happy, either. It all exists in a little space in between. Someone told me one time that those are all of the good books. Not the happy ones, nor the sad ones, but the ones in between. Going home is a good book.