Written on the Bus Home

I’m taking the bus to New Haven, heading home for the first time since July.

Its never just an easy transition when I head back, even for a day. My first emotion is usually guilt. Why am I leaving my residents? What if they need me? They’re so young and inexperienced-- what if something happens, and they have no one to which they feel safe to turn?

I want to stop here and mention that this feeling is absolutely fucking insane. Guilt because I’m leaving my live in job?! What is up with that? Its gotten to the point where I can’t stay just be spontaneous during the day, because they need to see me on the floor. I need to be a good RA. I need to be present. I need a mood stabilizer, it seems. Nowhere does it say that I should get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach because, god forbid, something should happen because/while I’m out enjoying myself a few T-stops away. Is this guilt because I should be around, or fear that they’ll fail to see me as anything other than the best RA. I can’t say what really happens there.

Of course, I also feel a lingering sadness going back to West Haven. After so many years of personal indoctrination, of telling myself that no one returns to success, there is a little bit of apprehension about going back. Going back means reestablishing ties. Reestablishing ties means reconnecting with the city. Reconnecting with the city will draw me back. Getting drawn back is the last thing I ever plan on doing. Does this mean that I’ll be 70 some day, living in a split level ranch that I’ve lived in for 40 years and talking about my friends from high school and how they’ve all died? Does this negate the experience that I have had in moving away and in finding an existence created on my own terms, rather than on the backs of those before me? Am I less interesting or less valid or less exciting because I am in a place where nothing special has ever happened and from where nothing exciting has ever developed?

Truly, other areas can seem more exciting, more cosmopolitan, or more fitting for my lifestyle. Some of the suburbs of Boston are FAR more attuned to the way I choose to live, aren't they? Surely, they're suburbs, and to some other 20 something, its got to be a place they don’t want to return. Maybe they see their own family ‘stuck’ there, stagnating, and saying “no, not me”. It’s their West Haven… but it’s not mine. Do I just see locales outside my hometown as inherently more exciting, simply because I have not lived there? Is this a fair assessment of my city, that it’s a social and intellectual sinkhole? By no means-- but its not wholly inaccurate. They don’t get out of that city, consigning themselves to familiarity and a community NOT based on academic prowess and success. It’s the suburban experience. It’s also a me vs. them mentality that does not let me see the brightness of individual experience, and the choices people have made for themselves. In some respect, it must be my own immaturity.

Or am I most scared that I might discover that I can’t truly escape, and that some part of me might even like being back where not a lot happens and the expectations are lower. Where the pressure lets up, and success is merely “satisfactory” and not “best in show”. Where they’re not going to care if I don’t get my doctorate, but golly they sure would be proud. Complacency and security are perhaps my fear here, because its safe and there’s a backup and I don’t have to take risks.

Something about not taking risks, it seems, is terrifying.