The return
Thanks to my cousin, who because she is family, does not charge me the scads of money to which she is normally due for fixing website problems of unknown etiology, I am once again able to vent my rage in cyberspace! Maybe someday I will have a useful skill with which to return the favor. For now about all I can do is send peanut butter care packages to Asturias, but it’s all done with love.
What has happened since I’ve been gone? Well, I went back to school. Again. This time for my PhD in social work. I moved to the same city where I was born and where most of my extended family still live, except this time around I can get into bars. It’s a completely new life, tinged with the familiar: my parents and sister live only 45 minutes away. I vaguely remember certain aspects of the city where I lived for my first decade, like the rusted Pevely Dairy sign towering over South Kingshighway and the guy selling pretzels on weekends in Tower Grove Park. Although I don’t know it well, there is a definite feeling of belonging that is not complete but is definitely more pronounced when I am in St. Louis than in any place I have lived before. Things that people in other places have pointed out to me as peculiarities, like my accent and fondness for atrocious cheese hybrids such as Provel (I have eschewed this in the six years I’ve been vegan, but at what cost?), fit right in here. I’ve already been asked by more people than I can remember where I’ve been to high school. I bonded with someone recently over our mutual remembrances of now-shuttered clubs like the Galaxy, the Creepy Crawl and the Side Door, where high school kids from Jefferson County escaped for punk rock therapy.
Knowing that I will probably move away when I’ve either completed my PhD or dropped out of school tinges the experience with something akin to regret, but not really. Longing, maybe. In the last decade I have never considered myself as belonging to anyplace at all, even though I identify strongly as a Midwesterner. I have been pleasantly surprised by my grown-up return to St. Louis, grit and humidity and all. I am from this place; I know it well, even though I have been gone for longer than I was ever here. At some point I will be an outsider again, and that fills me with a mixture of anticipation which I’m not sure is excitement or resignation.
Although I cannot stomach the thought of living in one place my entire life–at least, not in the same place where I was born–I think I am starting to understand why most people do it. The tug of the familiar is persuasive. The people here sound like me, are thrifty like me, buy their Jack Daniel’s down to the gas station like me. Everything’s cheap and the people are fun and living here would be easy. If I could find an outlet for my wanderlust, I think I could grow old in a rocking chair overlooking Cherokee Street. Assuming I wasn’t shot.
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January 11th, 2011 at 1:18 am
I feel the same way. It’s funny how after being away for so long and not really experiencing STL as an adult, I can still relate. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the other places I have lived have constantly reminded me of my outsider status.
January 12th, 2011 at 2:58 pm
It’s funny you bring this up! I’ve had similar feelings, during my past trip to the midwest a month ago. I’ve been living in Spain for exactly two years now, and I remember when I arrived: It was all so new, exciting, and adventurous compared to the drab boring landscapes that make up any town in the midwest. But, during my two-month stay, it felt comforting and I found myself wishing I could’ve stayed longer. I, too, am not sure if I could settle into one place for the rest of my life. In fact, I’m pretty damn sure that I don’t have it in me at all. Yet, I also have recently gained an understanding of the folks that do.
February 4th, 2011 at 10:01 am
Welcome Back to STL. I never thought you would be back here (even though I only new you in Springfield). The Creepy Crawl? Really? Wow, I havent heard that name in 10 years!!!