Sometimes, you can go home again

I've written about the barometers for measuring adulthood before, but there's another hallmark of which I've recently become cognizant that I want to mention - when you can return to your childhood home, free of feelings of oppression and resentment, and appreciate it once more as the comfortable, safe haven it was in your youth.
Like most benchmarks of adulthood, this is not a one-size-fits-all deal. First, your childhood home had to be a place of safety and comfort to begin with, which unfortunately is not the case for everyone. Secondly, you have to be able to return to your home as an adult. Lastly, you need to work your way through any negative emotions associated with the home or people therein, which might be the hardest part of all.
However, if all of these conditions exist, you might find yourself, like me, sitting in your childhood bedroom, stranded at your childhood home for the longest period of time since you graduated college, and strangely not all that fussed about it. In fact, maybe you're even a little bit happy.
This is the latest odd turn of events in what has become something of an odyssey to get to my soon-to-be home of Los Angeles, CA. Having moved out of my Philadelphia apartment in November, but without a car to take me to LA for another week, and in the midst of the holiday season, there is no more logical place to be than the house in Hazleton, PA where I grew up.
The fact that I'm grateful to be marooned in what I generally refer to as the armpit of the universe speaks volumes about how the wisdom that comes with experience can dramatically shift your perspective. First of all, I am finally able to appreciate how lucky and privileged I am to have the safety net of a familial home to return to in my time of need. Growing up in my middle-class, white privilege bubble, I took for granted that everyone had a supportive family they could count on, a comfortable place they could call home, and the security that that home would always be there. Ten years of living on my own, meeting people from all different backgrounds, and generally expanding my worldview taught me that this is not always the case, and I am extremely lucky. And that my luck is predicated on the luck, privilege, and planning of past generations of my family. To throw another literary reference in this post, no man (or woman or non-binary individual, thank you very much) is an island.
Returning to my childhood home also means confronting and re-contextualizing the feelings of oppression, rebellion, hopelessness and insecurity that marked my teenage and young adult years. From about age 13 until I moved out for good at age 23, there was nothing I desired more than to leave Hazleton and never look back. My feelings about the town itself have not changed much; the prevailing political, cultural and social mileux in Hazleton are essentially the antithesis of every belief I hold. There will never be any love lost between me and a city known as "the town that hates Mexicans." 
But there was nothing objectively wrong with any aspect of my life - I had a loving family; all of my basic needs met, plus a variety of privileges; close friends; a decent education. And yet, to a strong-willed, independent, adventuresome, idealistic teenager like myself, all of these things seemed horribly restraining. I didn't want my parents' concern or guidance; it just felt like they were trying to tell me what to do. I didn't want their discipline; I could do whatever I wanted because I knew better than them. I didn't want their caution; they may have been afraid of everything, but I was brave and bold.
I look at my bedroom's pale purple walls and remember when this room felt like a prison. There's the door that my father once threatened to remove if I slammed it one more time because, according to him, "There's no law that says you have to have a door." (I did not challenge him on that, because I knew he would do it. Mike Scatton did not fuck around.) There are all the Broadway and New York wall decorations, because that was where I was headed ASAP (the irony now being that I would lose my damn mind if I had to live in New York City. Eight million people in a little over 300 square miles is absurd, and I will fight all the New Yorkers who crawl out of their shoebox apartments to disagree with me).
Of course you can go home again; just don't expect it to feel the same. That's not always a bad thing. As I prepare to embark on a 3,000 mile journey to a new home across the country, there's something apropos about being able to sit in "my bedroom" - a space me and my belongings have occupied for almost 34 years - and feel a sense of peace and closure within the walls. 
I can still feel that restless, ambitious, angsty teenager pacing the pink-carpeted floors - I honor her now by taking this leap and living out her wildest fantasies (well, some of them - her wildest fantasies typically involved being naked with Backstreet Boys). But I know this adventure wouldn't be possible without the support and security of the place and people she calls home, and for that, I'm grateful.


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