Musings on moving back home, routines and finding yourself again

Post-grad is really weird.

One day, you’re finishing exams and projects, planning themed goodbye parties and going out with your friends. Then it’s cap and gown, tears, thanks for everything and off you go.

The problem is the “off you go” part, obviously, because where do you go?

For me, it was back home. Which felt in a way like an extended summer for a little while. Then it felt like I was living someone else’s life. And then somewhere between routine and habit, it has become my daily life.

And if post-grad is weird, being back home is straight up uncanny. 

I drive through the same road home that I could navigate with my eyes closed, I go on walks in the same park I used to when I needed to decompress from fighting with my high school friends, and I sit to work from home at the same table in which I used to cry about math homework with my dad. Years have passed, and so many things have stayed the same in my hometown. 

I am the one who changed.

When I drive to work, I pass by the kids waiting for the school bus right outside my neighborhood. I used to wait in the exact same spot every morning for five years. When I go to restaurants or shops, the people taking my order are often college students who I remember as my little sister’s middle school classmates. The malls and the shops and the parks all reek of the memories I have in them, but I am no longer the same person who made them.

It doesn’t necessarily make me sad. It’s nostalgic and it’s crazy and it makes me feel the passage of time ever so quicker in my bones -- but it also makes me happy. It makes me think of a version of myself that would be proud of who I’ve become.

I have fallen into a routine. I used to complain about long car rides, and now my hour-long commute is a walk in the park. I could not imagine myself meal prepping, and now I help make lunch for everyone in the house the night before. I was averse to getting ready in the mornings, and now I have a twelve-step routine that includes skincare, Invisalign care, makeup and hair, all while my tiny senior dog watches me from the bathroom rug.

But I have also found older versions of myself in the cracks of my home. I got a shelf with doors (my first piece of furniture I bought and built on my own), and I filled it with my books. So now I have a mini version of the dream library I always dreamt of. I started writing in notebooks again, and I’m journaling my days. I unearthed my old Kindle and found the stash of mementos that I put away when I left for college. The other day, I actually drew an entire face. There are so many things that I didn’t realize I had stopped doing until I saw my house, and it looked back at me with no recognition.

Being home means going through old things, finding letters from people whose names I haven’t heard in years, going through all the silly, pointless trinkets I decided to save because they meant something to me at some point in my life. 

Being home means spending time with younger me, with me from a couple of months ago and with this new stranger version of me that we are all getting to know together. And this weird amalgamation of my internal selves can be confusing at times. Because I remember what it felt like to be trapped in my room at 16 like it was yesterday, but I also cannot recall the sound of my high school best friend’s voice. 

But I’m learning to cohabit with myself, with my past, present and future all at once. And though I remain terrified of the future, things that I used to fear back then now get easier every day. 

So, I’m going to keep sitting in the weirdness that is moving back to my childhood home, and for as long as I’m here, I’m going to relish the opportunity to grow up with the ghost of my younger self again.