"We've gotten 2 bids on the house!" Mom texted with genuine excitement.
The hour of the closing of a chapter is upon me and it feels so surreal.
I'll be the first to admit that it is a little dramatic to say this is my last visit to California ever, but it is a realistic possibility that this is the last time I'll ever visit Stockton.
- My family won't be there, so no reason to visit. And my best friends have all moved.
- If Trace and I are paying for a vacation somewhere, wouldn't it we be more apt to be adventurous and go somewhere new?
- It's Stockton.
It's a place I've never enjoyed, so why is it so painful to let go?
I've always despised Stockton for all the pain it represents in my life, all the hardships I've had to overcome and work through. I say I grew up in Memphis, but I survived Stockton. The complete loneliness, the betrayal, the hurt.
Getting caught for our slam book in seventh grade. Watching my family disintegrate. Being bullied from third grade on through tenth grade. Always feeling like never enough. All of these horrible feelings and memories...
I think maybe I've never been good at letting go. Good, bad, awful, I cling. The absence of a part of me being more painful than the part as bad as it is in itself. Because that's what happens, isn't it? The people, places, and experiences integrate themselves into you. They become part of you. And saying goodbye to something is never easy when it's become a part of you.
The memories I'll cherish? Visiting the Haggin Museum and climbing my little tree that was just the right size for me. Becoming friends with Liz and how much she loved me that she would buy me food from the evil food cart lady every day. The stability and love I had at the law firm—my first work family. Taquitos from Alberto's. Ravioli from De Vinci's. Pizza from Dante's and David's. Family dinners at Tio Pepe's. Our bright yellow house. My parents' bright yellow home is no longer bright. They've repainted it and now it's destined to be another family's regular run-of-the-mill beige house. I always thought there'd be a day when my parents passed away years and years from now where Steven, my brother, and I, would lovingly retrace our steps in an empty house, remembering everything that was, everything that shouldn't have been, and the small and rare beautiful moments that were like pearls glowing in an abyss of pain and plainness. But I imagined that I would be in my late sixties and Steven, his early sixties. Not 31 and 28.
It's this realization of age, I think. Of time having passed. There's an illusion of pocketing our youth by being able to visit the home in which we grew up. The nostalgia that's thick like a winter's blanket, it makes childhood feel far and near at the same time. Near, like you can grasp it, hang onto it for a little bit longer, because it's not really gone as long as you're standing in your childhood room. The room where you called your first crush on the phone. The room whose walls changed from Princess pink for a little girl to lime green to please a teenager. The room where you and your childhood best friend penned in marker a heart, staining the wood of the closet, the declaration that you'd be best friends forever.
Now that door is closing and it is time to come to terms with time. I am really in my thirties. I am really an adult. My parents are older and life is different.
And it's beautiful and scary all at once.
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