Coming “Home”- March 7, 2020
This feeling I feel is hard to explain. After living and traveling abroad for over 2 years I wasn’t really sure what to expect when coming back “home” to New York.
It wasn’t my choice to come back and I was dreading it for months before it happened. But I’m trying to make the best of it and struggling hard.
When I pictured coming back, I imagined everything being the same as when I left with everyone a bit older and life a bit more lived. But in reality, everything is different. My building lobby has been redesigned; my apartment, carpeted; my neighbors, new; my brother and sister live in different cities as they did before I left and with different people; my best friend is engaged to a new man I pretty much only know from FaceTime; multiple friends and family members have gotten married, had babies and started new jobs. They don’t have time or space for me, or at least that’s how it feels.
I came back thinking everything would be the same. Trying to slide back into a place I so quickly and easily slipped away from. But I can’t do that. Nothing is the same. No one is the same. And most importantly, I’M NOT THE SAME. To be honest, I’ve probably changed the most. Like I did with my childhood shoes and clothes, I’ve outgrown my “home” in New York. It does not feel like the place I’m meant to be, and it really never did. I feel like a stranger in almost every aspect of life. And while I miss my New York friends and family so much when I’m not with them, I’m a better version of myself when I’m not here.
There is something so freeing about starting life over. Introducing yourself to a new place and new people and being able to create a persona where people have no prior knowledge of the person you once we’re. People don’t know me. They don’t know my extremely well connected family. I don’t need to worry about living in the shadow of a big brother who was a professional athlete and an extremely successful businessman. I don’t need to worry about stares of pity from people that knew when I was a kid that my brother died in a car accident and my uncle died in the 9/11 terror attacks. I don’t need to worry about being a role model for my little sister or making sure she is happy. I don’t need to pretend to make nice to people whom I have nothing in common with when I run into them at the supermarket or nail salon. I don’t need to worry about going to the bagel store for a cup of coffee and seeing someone from high school who in an instant reminds me of some of the worst years of my life. I’ve carried so many burdens for so many years while growing up. Most of which I’m well aware I have put on myself. But nonetheless it’s as if I’d carried the weight of the world on my shoulders. Leaving allowed me to soar away to find who I was really meant to be. For the first time in years, I could finally just focus on living life for ME!
I don’t carry burdens for people I’ve met while abroad. I do my best to help them when they need it and I of course feel their pain occasionally, but the reality is they have all lived their whole lives without me. They were all doing just fine before I entered their lives and the hard pill to swallow is that they will be just fine when I’m gone.
It’s the people I’ve grown up with, my family, my siblings, the skeletons in the closet that come out more and more with each passing day that weigh me down.
Catch me if you can…
Jo Mo