growin’ up (or, i’m moving out and this is how i feel)
Two weeks ago, I went out to dinner with my dad at a suburban restaurant we used to go to as a family when we were still a complete family; it’s been just over a year (though some could argue that it’s been two years) since he left. Right before we left, I excused myself to use the restroom. While in my stall, I could hear a girl on her cell phone, telling a story.
“Yeah, we went to Louis Vuitton. I picked it out. I have $600 already and then my grandma is sending me the other $250, and I’ll be able to pay my parents back for it. It’s so cute,” she told.
Really? I thought. I remember what high school on the North Shore is like; John Hughes movies are really too flattering. We used to joke that there was a uniform—when I was in high school, it was Birkenstock clogs and a Northface fleece (I don’t believe much has changed), and chunky Tiffany bracelets and Coach purses were super bonuses. Louis Vuitton certainly carries higher price tags than a Coach, but I “get it.” But I never actually got it. Having grown up in a Section-8 apartment in a family that lived paycheck-to-paycheck, the idea of spending $300 on a purse never really made sense to me. Despite all of this, I understand why this girl in the bathroom of an upper-middle-class Asian restaurant was juiced for her $850 Louis Vuitton bag. Still, I rolled my eyes. Hard.
On the way out, we passed the valet stand, and a huge, idling Rolls Royce. At that point, I thought, “Okay, I am over this. I fucking hate this place. This is my story. I’m a just a poor city kid who doesn’t belong in the suburbs; none of this is me. None of this was every right for my family.” At that point, I thought I had something to say. Maybe if we had never come out to this terrible, homogenous cesspool of superficiality, we could’ve figured stuff out. Maybe we could’ve planned a little differently and had things work out better. I don’t believe in fairytale endings, but I think that there’s a lot of room between where my parents are now and where they could have been if they had made different choices. That said, this is my story.
But today, I came right home after work to pack my things, and I don’t know what to do with myself now. My grade school, high school, college, and graduate school graduation-cap tassels are hanging off of a peg on a bookshelf filled with dozens of books I don’t have space for at my new place. My dog is sleeping at the foot of my bed, snoring, and there are photos hanging on the walls from a time in my life during which I thought I had cleared karma’s hurdle and would spend the rest of eternity being happy. I’m not jazzed about leaving everything behind, because not everything has been terrible.
My dad left in February, and my little sister left in August, for college. Only my mother and I remain, and leaving a five-bedroom house to one single woman with two dogs feels a little bit like quitting. They had a dream; they reached for it; it failed, with consequences. My sister had to leave, I guess, but my dad quit because it wasn’t working: he wasn’t working. I’m leaving because I’m too old to still be here, and it’s time to build my own life. One, hopefully, that has fewer mistakes than I’ve witnessed during the past 25 years.
It’s hard to deny that I’m really excited to be my own person and to have my own space, but I can’t help but imagine what our huge dining room table is going to feel like to my mother every time she walks past it, or how long it’ll take her to realize that maybe two refrigerators is one too many. Most of all, I guess, I’m bummed that I was right: this was never really “for” us, and we never should have left the city. I’m going back where I came from, a completely different person from the awkward 14-year old I was when I left, with a different philosophy: being right isn’t always the best.
