I went home this weekend. It didn’t end up being the best
decision. It was raining so I had to be inside most of the time, and being
trapped inside, especially in my Mom’s house, either makes me depressed or go a
little stir crazy.
These days, Pasadena’s pretty limited in terms of people my
age I know that still live there. Since I had nothing else to do do I drove to
Starbucks, the only place where you can charge your laptop in Pasadena, to chip
away at the mountain of work in between that degree and me in May.
Driving around my hometown in the “off-season” when everyone’s
at school has been a strange experience this year. It’s like a totally
different universe. The last time I lived here full time, I was in high school going
to house parties and being a bum with an amazing amount of time on my hands
that I would kill for these days.
I went to my first two years of college at the University of
Portland, and coming home was never as jarring because I was only home during
the summers. Now that I go to LMU in West Los Angeles, only a few
miles from my parents and the few friends I have that are still living there, I
end up in Pasadena a lot more often now.
When I go back now it’s like all that life that used to
be here in my context is gone, replaced by what else, the new generations of
high school kids and our aging parents.
With the prospect of graduation looming ever closer, it
makes me wonder what Pasadena is going to be like when people start coming
back, if they start coming back. A little part of me in the back of my mind
always thinks that one way or another, in my adult life, I’ll be back in
Pasadena. It’s a nice place to have a family and settle up if you can afford
private high school because the public schools are some of the worst. But in
this stage of my life, 21 years old, my own hometown is feels infinitely un-relatable.
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