So, I hopped on a plane to fly back east a few days ago. I'm visiting my folks in a suburb 20 miles outside of Boston, where I grew up. It has been 2 years since I've last been at home, and seen many of my friends who live here.
These trips are always bittersweet. I actually don't try to return to Boston very much. If anything, my experience away from here has made me appreciate the place I came from even more (not that I ever felt any particular "pride" I suppose) but to be honest, it's been 10 years since I decided to leave and the world I live in now is very, very different, in many ways.
It is a strange time to be back here, particularly, as it's an unusual time in my life. I've spent the last year trying dramatically to alter my career path, and it has been affecting my philosophy, and my ultimate goals and expectations. This is something I have gone through more than a couple of times in the past decade, but it feels more pronounced now as I am "not a kid anymore." It feels strange to be 35 years old still "don't have my act together," but I don't feel as though I am trying to do something I shouldn't. I have been going with the flow, relatively, for so long (being a company man) and it's ultimately got me nothing but constant aggravation and bitterness. I still love what I do, and a lot of the things about my job; I just really,
really want to change they way I do them. This is not an easy thing. Independence is hard-won.
Being in Boston is always so jarring for my nerves. Until I moved away from all I knew, I never had a sense of what it felt like to have a place to return to that sort of compartmentalized the notions of my childhood, my adolescence, and all the feelings, memories, and meanings that those contained. It was always step-to-step. "Now I live in this house. Now I am in grade 6. Now I am in high school. Now I've kissed a girl. Now I have my first job. Now I have a car." Always bookended with the same general (though growing) surroundings. Abruptly, it changed when I moved and rebooted my life - and when I would return home to visit, I'd feel like I was two people. California Ron and Boston Ron. One guy acts/talks/thinks one way, with a certain history, and same for the other. Same root, but a definite split.
I guess the big punch to all of this is, so much has changed in the decade since leaving. Well, much has changed, and some things haven't, but my perspective and understanding of them has. When I was in my 20s, things were fresh and raw and endless. This dragged on a lot with my "reboot," but after several years now there's a healthy dose of reality which covers everything. And now I come back home and see things with this new perspective, and things aren't so raw and fresh and possible anymore. What used to be my goofy pack of friends has slowly turned into something different, everyone is older and a lot of them just don't seem to have ended up where they "should have." My dad told me I am "the renegade," the one who got away to try and do something unusual (still trying). It makes me proud in one way, but it also feels weird to see where I could have ended up, and I don't feel like I am out of the woods yet either.
Also, my parents are obviously older. I am close with my folks, I love them very much and they have always been there for me (I am lucky to have a good relationship with them) but anyone reading this can probably relate to how it can be strange to see what happens to one's parents are decades start to go by. It's strange, and it can be upsetting, and I just want them to be happy and comfortable and, really, feel like we've all done right by one another (this seems to be one of the most difficult things in any family). I know they are proud of what I am trying to do, and I will keep doing what I can to push that as far as I can.
Boston is cold, it is stark, it's sad.. it feels very foreign to me now in a lot of ways. I feel more out of place here as I spend more time away, more alien. There's always a part deep inside of me that lights up when I return here (that compartmentalization mentioned earlier) but as I get older I just feel like that's less and less familiar, less real, and it upsets me to face that.
On the bright side, I feel very connected with the time and place that I live in now, I am always trying to keep focused on the present (perhaps too much so) and it feels good to be cemented to the here and now. Hopefully I can stick around for awhile.
-Ron
