Home Again, Home Again
Every time I come home to Long Island I realize more and more that Los Angeles is my actual home now. This fills me with mixed emotions. I will always consider myself a New Yorker. I love Long Island, I’m a die-hard Yankees fan, and I have an accent that I never realized was so thick until I moved to the west coast.
Can you truly go home again? Going to the movies with my dad sure felt like home again. Dinner made by my mom sure felt like home too. Spending the last few nights hanging with old friends and not skipping a beat in the conversation, most certainly felt like home. But as much as these moments bring back that old-time feeling, they are fleeting. Not the love I have of my friends and family, that will never change, but the feeling that this will never be the same home I once had. Is Long Island nostalgia for me now?
First of all the landscape has changed. Things are the same but different, be it the refurbished mall, the store fronts of my hometown, or the fact that Smithtown apparently now has a huge heroin problem. (Really? Really.) The people are the same but different too. Many are gone from the old days. The ones that remain (or the ones I keep in touch with – the lifers forced to deal with my neuroses until the day we die) are now home owners, parents, or waaay out in the boondocks building movie theaters in their garages. This is where the confusion really sets in – I am simultaneously envious and terrified of their lives. Whenever I’m home I wonder, should I have a wife to love me by now? Should I have a beautiful child by now? (For the record I don’t wonder should I be building a movie theater in a garage but felt it was noteworthy to mention) Then I think of my life in LA. Pursuing my dreams and answering to no one but myself. I want the things LI gives but I crave the life LA offers. Is this why coming home feels weird sometimes, because it causes the two aspects of my desires to duke it out in my brain? And why then can’t I just strive for both?
Despite all these feelings I’m already planning another trip home. Between family and friends (who are family too) this trip is not letting me spend the time I want with all of them. I know it makes me sound like a cliché pussy Mary sissy baby but that really is what home is – being with the ones you love. Be it Ale in LA or Larissa on LI, that’s the way you can be at home.
But let’s face it; in the greater scheme of things my original home has changed. It will never be the same. The real reason LA is my home now is because for the first time it’s a life I’ve made on my own. 3000 miles away from family, for the past 4 ½ years creating new hang outs, new routines. So as I sit in my old bedroom here on Long Island, staring at an X-Files poster I bought in high school, the painful reality is – no matter how much love you have for the place and the people, you can’t go home again.
What a Crappy Time To Be Alive! 
December 28, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I don’t think that you can’t come home… I think you just evolve beyond it. The entire duration of your life you become accustomed to certain people, places, and things. When you leave that habitat you have to adapt to the new place, and boom, you evolve. Its never the same b/c you’re not the same. Going home is a great reminder of where you were. and creating your new home shows progess of where you want to be.
December 29, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Oooh, look at me. My name is Ale in the Valley. And I am sooo smart. Actually, you are pretty smart. That was very wise. I can go home again and often do since it’s only 20 minutes away. Trust me. You’re better off being 3000 miles away. What’s that mom? Nothing! Okay, gotta go, guys. Dinner is waiting.
December 30, 2009 at 5:57 am
Like Frodo and the Shire, Luke and tatooine, Charlie and the fucking chocolate factory. You cant go back once you cross that threshold. Because you arent the same person when your done with the journey.
That said….
Should you have a house and kids and a loving wife? Someday im sure you will if thats what you want. If you asked me 5yrs ago if thats where I would be Id laugh at you, kick teenagers out of a comic store and then smoke a cig.
Theres always going to be a part of me that wonders if I took a different path too. I wouldnt lie if I said I wasnt envious of you in some respects. Im just glad these things havent made us drift apart as friends.
It’s kinda like that Talking Heads song…I wonder how I got there but I wouldnt change anything. I wouldnt trade it for the world. I mean, I got a baby on the way! Its an adventure into the unknown. I wise man once told me “the greatest adventure is what lies ahead”*. Its true.
*thats a lie, its from the animated hobbit. sorry.