"I was not able to comprehend the beauty that was before me. I just wanted… to go home"

A feeling that I find myself having over and over, not just recently but for as long as I can trust my memory, is that I’d like to go home.

I mean it figuratively- I do feel a yearning to find a spot amongst humanity where I feel safe and fully secure, a state that maybe I’ve always known but has periodically escaped my grasp due to things like emotional turmoil, insecurity or my infrequent but regular bouts of hangeriness (hanger?)

But more than that I feel it literally. I just, like, want to go home.

Home, a physical place that always stays exactly the way I left it. Each pillow and utensil stays put, in the spot where I decided at one point that it belongs, temporarily or forevs. A place where no one asks me a single question. A place where I control the music selection and volume. Where anything that catches my eye can be changed without the express permission of another human being.

I’m not huge on Going Out as a concept. It always feels like something easy to agree to with a required follow-through that later feels entirely unreasonable. To have an entire day and then expend the energy to get cute and travel to a new location, often in a different borough, to go out at night, feels like a whole thing. I want to want to. I do. I want to get really excited by the prospect of a crazy night out. But my age and my lack of drinking ensure that I’m starting off with energy and enthusiasm deficits, which are compounded by my non-negotiable requirement of 10 hours of sleep a night and mild attitude problem.

I remember saying, at a younger age, to friends who were dragging their heels when it came to agreeing to plans that if they just got up the energy and met up with us that they’d be glad they did. I now know that this is not a reliable statement. It’s often the case that me and my wedges teeter up to my group outside of whatever mediocre bar in the East Village and, despite the fact that I MADE IT, the fact that I’d like to go home, immediately if possible, hits me with great force.

It has nothing to do with the quality or number of my friends, whom I love. But it can’t be overstated how much introverts like moi get their energy completely sapped by even the quietest, most well-meaning people in our orbits. Making small talk at all is painful for us, making it seem like we’re actually enjoying it requires a level of concentration unheard of outside of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

I actually love other people, I truly do. I enjoy being part of a lively debate, having an extra set of hands for assembling furniture, and trading dumb puns and flaming hot pieces of goss. But I find the prospect of being alone truly idyllic, an existence so Eden-like, so completely comfortable, with water features and flowers that smell amazIng and a sun that doesn’t burn.

Some of it is directly tied to the specific activities I find myself participating in. Each year, the Rest Of My Life feels more urgent. My remaining time feels compressed, which tends to make watching bad live music more painful than ever before, at times to the point of calling it midway through a set. 

I’m much less interested in doing things that I already know I won’t be good at. I have accepted that I can’t be incredible at everything (stop laughing, I have) but at 33 I have tried an excessively long list of activities and experiences and I simply do not feel the need to broadcast widely how much I can’t make contact with a tennis ball. In a “free society”, I refuse to find myself in middle school gym class again.

One exception to the outing ambivalence are food-focused quests. I’m gastronomically enthusiastic, and am trying new things nonstop- mochi donuts. Vegan donuts. Savory donuts. Sometimes I even eat something that isn’t a donut. I’m always down for a food-centric plan. We can all focus on the items we’re consuming, which lubricates conversation with new people (“This muffin tastes bad”) and there is usually a well-defined endpoint to the ritual which makes a graceful exit way more possible.

On the flip side, I was once taken to a Mets game. I had a great time for the first inning, but it turns out there are like nine of those in a game. “But how long are the innings? Like 15 minutes?” you’re probably asking and the answer is no one knows so just sit there and watch the world’s slowest sport. I don’t even like to agree to open-ended things that I know I’ll fundamentally enjoy, so sitting at a baseball stadium, not drinking, not knowing when I can bounce was highly unpleasant.

I remember when I was a kid my parents used to take us to lots of different classical music concerts. I remember thinking that while that wasn’t the kind of music I listened to when I had the  choice, going to a concert was a fun change of pace, a nice opportunity to do something different. But then I would sit in the uncomfortable velvet chairs in the balcony of the Kimmel Center and all I could think about was how straight my back was, how cramped my legs were... my discomfort was all-consuming. If someone had given me an out mid-way through I would have taken it no questions asked. I just remember thinking that kids would be way more interested in classical music if we could listen lying down, sucking a milkshake out of a Camelbak with maybe a nice breeze blowing through our hair. It’s similar to how I feel about heterosexual women and casual sex- we’d be way more down for it if we could all agree to a five minute period starting from the moment a strange guy shows up in your apartment during which you can opt out of the hookup no questions asked and they can’t give you a hard time or murder you. And while we’re discussing societal norms, why can you only bum cigarettes? Wouldn’t it be cool if you could bum other objects? I’m not even sure what objects would make sense but it’s a such a one-love tradition. The point is- why aren’t we re-writing the rules here? Things don’t just have to be this way.

Instead, there I was, pulling at the sort-of fancy shirt I wore that didn’t quite fit me perfectly, trying not to breathe too loudly, counting down the tens of minutes til I could go home. No matter how much I enjoyed the music I found myself wondering if I concentrated enough if I could set the building just a little bit on fire, just on fire enough to stop the show and free me from my upholstered straight jacket.

In a larger sense, I absolutely have a general anywhere-but-here feeling, at least I did until moving to New York. I’ve had countless different roofs over my head but the concept of “home” has been a bit elusive. Even when I go home now, it’s not that it’s reliably an actively enjoyable setting- it’s just that it’s still and predictable and has my snacks and no one is expecting me to entertain them, not even my weirdo dog. I do think there’s value to pushing yourself to do cool-but-scary things, but going home can be an empowering act and I’m all about empowerment. You go girl.