On Sunday, I came back from a trip I took to Boston, where I had a wonderful time. It was a mini-reunion with my friends from college, and I immediately felt like no time had passed since the days when I spent nearly all of my conscious hours of these people. I found within myself the person that I was when I lived with those people for three years. All the old dynamics were there, despite the fact that all of us have grown up a little bit more since the last time we saw each other.
Before the trip, I had agonized about whether or not I would still remember how to navigate the T–especially since the MBTA had gone to a fancy Charlie Card system since I had left. How dare Boston update their antiquated T system and expect me to readjust, after two long years of driving a car wherever I need to go?!
But I had no problems whatsoever. As soon as I walked into the airport T station, I said to myself, “I’ve got this shit. Why did I worry?” (The answer is because I am a first-class worrier, and why give up that piece of my identity?) It may have been two years, but Boston was still my city, and I could get to where I needed to go.
My friends and I spent one day on our college campus, Wellesley, which is just outside the city of Boston. I was truthfully a little worried about how I would react to being at Wellesley, because it is a place that represents to me, some of the most pure feelings of belonging and self-worth. I associate Wellesley with the happiest version of myself that I have ever experienced.
When I was getting my graduate degree at BU, trapped in a terrible living situation, and spending as much time as possible at Wellesley with my friends who still technically belonged there, when I had to leave campus, every time, I had an overwhelming urge to throw myself down on the ground, right there in the snow and dirt, and refuse to ever leave that spot.
But Wellesley, just as with Boston, and just as with my friends, it felt like I had never left. And when it was time to go, I didn’t feel like I needed to throw myself onto the ground and absorb the soil of that place into my skin, so that I could never be separated from it. It didn’t feel like I had ever left Wellesley. It felt like I continuum of where I had been and where I would continue to be. I mean, I actually took a nap in the student center. I can’t think of another public place where I’d feel completely comfortable and justified in sitting my ass down on a couch, putting my feet up on a table, and falling asleep.
My time in Boston and at Wellesley was incredibly comforting to me, because it told me that I could go away for years, and then come back, and I could still feel like I belonged there. Boston, and Wellesley especially, will always be a little bit of my home. This trip made me feel like I can go away, and I can come back, and it will all still be there waiting for me. That part of my life isn’t as over as I had thought it was. It’s still there, and I can have it back when I need it again.
