Home wasn’t something that made me feel better or the solution to my problems. Being home was more akin to a CW premiere rather than the fun reunion episode of that lovely sitcom you watch in the family room. Driving through the downtown strip looking up at dozens of new developments, it seems like the city has finally found its get-rich-quick scheme. I can still remember when everything was small. I don’t mean to, but I slow as I see the street signs familiar of neighborhoods. The lit signs of restaurants flit past my window and I see the places where my heart suffered cracks.
It’s that small white house, a faux two-story because really the second floor is only one bedroom. It’s the third one down from the corner, the one with the blue porch and that bright red door. The colors never change as seasons come and go. There is a woman who lives on the first floor, through the red door, and to the left, I call her Mama. When I arrive home, it’s a joyous return. Mama arrives at the airport right on time, hauling bags into the back, ready for an hour of delightful interrogation. She’s craving insight into my life, my studies, my friends, and are they actually more than friends? Winter tires roll over uneven asphalt that leads to home, wheels banging in and out of potholes making up those lovely Michigan roads.
The first week back is clouded with twinkling lights, warm fires, and the smell of pine. There is no time for thoughts of my former self or the people I may see now that I’ve returned. Only Hallmark movies and Christmas cookies, raucous laughter in matching pajamas. Holiday cheer has swallowed cynicism; I feel it only a little fighting in the pits of my stomach. The day after the festivities, I go into town. It’s familiar in the wrong kind of way. The city’s expanse offers the comfort of an abandoned house, you can tell that it has been lived in, but you’d never call it home.
“Up North Michigan,” not a direction but a place. The vast expanse of the northern half of the state boiled down into so many words (no, not the Upper Peninsula we call that the U.P.). I go with two friends. After having survived our suburban hellscape and moved away, we’ve returned on our own terms. We sing all the way there, off-key and loud. Our time together is spent consuming completely unhealthy amounts of reality television and dancing in socks that slide right across smooth hardwood. The trip ends on a countdown into the new year, one which becomes clouded by panic from a COVID scare (I was negative). We welcome 2022 with maximum levels of guilt, anxiety, and fear.
The holidays are over, and the pressure of regression builds. The weight of it filling my chest, my room, the covers, and my limbs feel much too heavy. It isn’t really my room. I’m staying with my abuelos while my family quarantines from the illness I’ve managed to dodge. It’s like a home away from home, but none of those are ever really home. We drink Capri Suns, eat popsicles, and play cards. Abuela tangles her careful fingers in my hair as we watch reruns of old crime TV. The one thing everyone can always agree on.
It’s 1:30 am, and I’m in the local 7/11 on the side of town that is not my own. I’m buying snacks. I was hungry and the Slurpee craving won out. With the coke and cherry in hand, I turn down the wrong aisle bringing me face to face with the Christmas ghost of past and apparently present. That boy from high school, the one I really didn’t want to see. In the 20 by 20-foot store, I make a quick assessment of escape routes, none of which are feasible. I’m stuck. He asks if I’m still trying to do that “writing thing”, the one I left Michigan for, the reason I wanted more. Pleasantries and small talk fill the neon aisle and I hate it. Not because there are still feelings. In fact, there is a complete absence of anything at all. It isn’t because I miss him, he really doesn’t even look the same. It isn’t even that I am embarrassed; I’ve never been better. It’s simply because I have been forced back into a place and person that I have entirely outgrown. This is upsetting because I realize that though I no longer know this ghost girl she can still be recognized and spoken to, she walks in my shoes and wears my face. I hoped that this chapter would stay closed, or at least that it wouldn’t be opened past midnight dressed in my pajamas.
This is what a return to home has been. A forced regurgitation of the past. Taking now stretched-out limbs and folding them up just right, so I can again fit in that comfy box. Confronted with the faces that so kindly lulled away the person I wanted to be into perverse contentment. I don’t say this though; I’ve said it all before, it’s become tired. This is something an old me was angry about, consumed with, I yelled at them and swore I’d leave. Now I’m back and I ask them how things have been.
It’s lovely to see family (some) because there is no expectation to speak with a girl who is dead. They like the way that I have grown my hair longer; they think the new color is pretty. The return to home is a violent one, a happy one, a depressing one. It’s most intensely a relieving one. A pair of arms now present to fall into, laps to fall asleep in, sisters to twirl and twirl until the eruption of giggles has swallowed us both whole. There is a safety net here, there are fewer worries. I am a child here.
I miss Home when I’m gone, of course. I miss the people who make it up, I miss the dependency and allure of childhood. I miss the consistency of girls I’ve known for ten years. My decisions have placed me far from this. The distance has forced the discovery of home in other people, places, and things. These new places are not replacements, they do not take away from Home as it exists in Michigan, it will always exist there. Even if the little white house is plowed over, and the whole downtown stretch becomes skyscrapers, it will still be home. These new homes are a necessity of my own creation. They stand on their own, accounting for greater height, stretched limbs, and larger feet.
Anaiis Rios’ 25
