| I've always played it safe. I stick to things I like, things I know I'll like, or things that people who know my likes and dislikes tell me about. I order the same thing every time I go to the restaurants I frequent, I watch movies with the same actors, I listen to the same cds, I cut my hair the same way, I even keep the same exact job I've had for four years. I am a creature of habit, and am prone to severe anxiety attacks when confronted with anything out of the ordinary. I rarely step outside the boundaries of this comfort zone I have set for myself, and I've realized that it's far from a good thing. I am never up for a spontaneous trip anywhere, and when I do take one, my expectations get the best of me, because from this little box I've created, I can dream about all the other things outside without having to go there and face reality. Coming to Boston for college I suppose was the most daring thing I've ever done, and that is a pale realization. This is the place I was born. The hospital in which I took my first breath is only a few blocks from where I sit and type this. Perhaps coming back here was like crawling back into the womb. Everything here is so familliar, so solid, and perhaps it shows, because people stop me on the street and ask me for directions quite frequently. Being comfortable here has allowed me to be lazy, to not explore or expand. It has allowed me to keep the persona that I adopted when I first moved to New Hampshire at the age of 11 - a scared, quiet girl who never spoke up. I have spent so much time looking for somewhere to belong, a cause, a movement, a crowd, that I have completely pushed aside the girl I was as a child. There are flashes of light sometimes, and I realize that I can have her back. I was never afraid then. I knew who I was, and that was enough for me. My drawings weren't the best, my singing was horrible, I wasn't a fast runner, but still I played every sport I could, stayed after school for chorus, and produced artwork in volumes. I was loud, energetic, and I was happy. I was so happy doing whatever it was I did. There was beauty in everything for me, and then a dark cloud descended, and I haven't been able to recapture whatever magic I held then. Perhaps it was discovering my father's alcoholisim on my own. Him coming home late and me being so excited to see him, and then him forgetting my name and watching him stumble up the stairs as a thin string of drool coming from the corner of his mouth made a dark spot on his light blue dress shirt. Or maybe it was seeing him in the hospital bed trying to explain how it was raining and his truck slid off the road, or maybe it was later that day at the junkyard, looking at the twisted wreckage of his truck. I poked the american flag sticker I had put on his back window, and the glass crumpled into the back cab of the truck, where there was a crumpled up beer can, his favorite kind. I wanted to know everything before then. After that, I didn't want to know anything. There's a point where every girl stops idolizing their father. It just usually doesn't happen in a day. I'm getting off the subject here, but I think my life is divided into two very different parts, and soon, the darker half will be longer than the light. My eleventh birthday will be forever stuck in my mind as the worst day of my life. Now, approaching 21, I want to turn things around again. I love this city. I love the way it smells, I love how the air feels on nights like these. I love walking down the streets and remembering something someone said to me at certain spots. I love some people here, and it makes me almost sick to my stomach to think about leaving them. To think that the next time I get a burrito with Andrew might be the last for a long time almost makes me want to cry. To think how few car rides I have left into Sommerville or how I haven't been taking enough lately, I can't even begin to describe how awful it makes me feel, because I'm still trying to understand it myself. But at the same time, I am happy. Because I know I am not who I want to be, and I don't think I'll ever become that person here. I need to be uncomfortable and disoriented and I need to figure out how to do it myself. I need to go someplace where nobody knows me or expects anything of me, and I need to turn back into who I was when I was ten. I need to sing and dance and act and be loud and bossy, and I need to enjoy it. I'm going to love it. I'm going to love me. |
