You Can't Go Home Again

I moved to Lowell from out of state about two and a half years ago. At the time I moved down here, my goal was to dedicate one year to the job that had brought me to the area while completing graduate school, then to move back. Well, we all know what the economy is like. And my one year stint in Massachusetts has stretched well beyond two.

I have always been fairly independent. Since the singular tragic summer camp incident at age 9 when I experienced a crippling case of home sickness and begged to be brought home halfway through the week, I have never had a recurrence of separation anxiety that has stopped me from going away. In fact, in looking back on my life, it seems like my youth was a string of attempts to get away from home. First, it was informing my parents that I intended to spend the entire summer living with my grandparents. When I got into high school, I took part in residential college-prep programs during the summer. Once I was in college, I devised ways to stay on campus year-round. And after graduation? I was not one of those kids that moved back in with Mommy and got comfortable and decided to stay. I was gone as soon as I could save up the money for first month’s rent and security deposit.

However, for all my itinerant tendencies, I have never been more than two hours away from my family until I came to Lowell. Up until about seven months ago, I traveled back to my home state every weekend. I used to see my mother a couple of times a month; now I am lucky if I see her once every other month. Being an only child, I do have a significant amount of guilt over being so far away as Mommydukes gets older and I know that she would like to have me closer.

The other day, Mommydukes left a message for me about a new company that’s moving into her area with jobs paying the equivalent of what I am making here in Massachusetts.

The first thing I thought of was something that an acquaintance, Marlene, recently said to me. Marlene is originally from New York, but has lived everywhere, landing in Massachusetts for the last 10 years.  Marlene’s perception of New England women is that they are the most scared group of people she has ever come across in her travels. She says that they are scared of living and that they are incredibly jealous of those people who don’t let their fears overcome them.

For the last four or five months, I have been feeling as if there is something else out there for me, a life beyond what I have already made for myself. In hearing my mother’s message, her shrouded plea for me to move back home, it dawned on me that for all of my drifting, I am still one of those scared women to which Marlene was referring. I have never really left my comfort zone. I have never really put myself out on the line to take a “make it or break it” chance. I have always chosen the “safe” alternative. And then I regret not being bolder. In Myers-Briggs lingo, I am an INTP. The “P” in me wants desperately to be spontaneous; it is what pushes me to rebel. But it is always overridden by the “T,” the thinking part of me, the part that examines all the angles and weighs everything carefully, and to a lesser extent, by the “I,” the introvert that worries about having to start over again and about being alone without a safety net.  

When I heard my mother’s message, my feelings became very clear. I do not want to move back to my home state. I feel selfish for admitting it because I am the only child, but I finally realized that I have to think about my own happiness. I had a brief glimpse of my life laid out on a string, with “home” behind me and my eyes looking down the sting at something else in my future. I felt like I have the potential of being in the same league as Marlene – going anywhere, doing anything and having no feelings of longing over lost opportunities. I realized that returning to my home state would just be a step backward… and right now, I feel something else propelling me forward. Into what? I guess I’ll have to wait and see.