My Home

Thomas Wolfe once famously said, “You can’t go home again.” While I tend to shy away from clichés, I happen to think this sad adage about growing up and apart from our childhood selves has special significance in my life. Halfway through high school, I moved to a different town and school. While this is a pretty huge event in the maturation and formation of anyone, for me it didn’t just signify a change in zip code and social circles but instead it changed the way I thought about “home”.

I grew up in Lincoln, MA, but I don’t consider that my hometown. Sure, that’s where my earliest experiences and oldest friends come from, but I never saw it to completion. I never experienced all of the dizzying drama that the last two years of high school bring, never experienced the collective insanity of graduation with those people. I drifted apart from so many of them, since high school is all about immediacy and I lived 2 hours away. I don’t even know where half of my old friends ended up, what college they went to, or who they brought to the prom.

I finished off high school in Sandwich, MA located on sunny Cape Cod. I made a few good friendships there; mostly my social circle was comprised of casual acquaintances with a similar sense of humor. This was where I prepared to go to college, where I had some of my more important teenage experiences, and where my parents continue to live to this day. But Sandwich isn’t my home, it’s not where I grew up; I don’t know any of the old traditions or any of the old friendships. I never really fit in because I wasn’t truly from there.

I obviously can never go back to Vassar College. Besides being a ridiculous idea for a living situation (although perfect for a FOX sitcom), there’s something absolutely depressing and defeatist by simply holing up in the old alma mater. Reliving glory days that never happened and creeping out new incoming freshman every autumn is hardly a life worth living.

After college, I moved to New York City. In my tiny apartment in the East Village, where my room comprised of my bed and a lamp I made in seventh grade woodshop, I never really felt like it was my home. More like a layover until I found the place where I truly belonged. I’m too courteous, polite and meek to survive in a city where I get yelled at for apologizing. Every day was a struggle for the survival of my civility. It was too expensive for a man of my meager wages, and constantly forced this homebody to venture into the outside world. As Jim Croce sings,

Though all the streets are crowded
There’s somethin’ strange about it
I lived there ‘bout a year and I never once felt at home
I thought I’d make the big time
I learned a lot of lessons awful quick
And now I’m tellin’ you
That they were not the nice kind
And it’s been so long since I have felt fine, that’s the reason

That I gotta get out of here
I’m so alone
Don’t you know that I gotta get out of here
cause New York’s not my home

I just moved to Philadelphia. I’m living with my best friend and his girlfriend, in a bigger apartment for much less money. My sister and her husband are nearby, as is my other best friend. And yet, I can’t help but feel like a houseguest who will shortly be overstaying his welcome. The streets don’t make any sense, and the public transit system is practically non-existent. Add into that the fact that it’s not quite that big of a city, especially when compared to New York, and this doesn’t feel like home either.

I don’t really have roots anywhere, although most of my family is located in Massachusetts. But even then, that’s not really any place I want to live or feel personally attached to. And I think that all of these reasons and listings of malcontent produce this real feeling of homelessness (not houselessness) in me. And that’s why I’m such a sad and rabid consumer.

I have thousands of DVDs, videos, books, comics, CDs, mp3s. I collect all of these items (most of which will become technologically obsolete in about 6 months) so that I have some semblance of normality. If I surround myself with all of these items, these familiar bits of escapism that have informed me and my outlook throughout my life, then I can create a crude version of home. The walls are patches of DVDs strewn together, under a roof of comic books. I sleep on a bed of CDs and eat on a table of familiar books I read repeatedly. My makeshift house of media and distraction travels with me in bags and boxes, ready to be constructed—my misdirection for the magical act of appearing normal.

So will I ever have a home? Will I ever sit in a house or apartment and look around and finally feel AT HOME? Not just because all my stuff is there but because it’s the place where my soul rests and where I feel safe and comfortable? I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that I can create a home out of the people I’m with, the people I love, and not rely on the latest issue of Wizard magazine to remind me that I’m way I should be. And maybe when I reach that level, that moment of semi-contentment, maybe that’ll be the moment I finally feel like an adult. I’ll finally feel like I’m living in this world, instead of just wasting time until my fantasy life becomes real.

Maybe.