“A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity. When for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. It’s as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.” –Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man

Something that is the hardest for me, returning home, are the vivid memories. We leave a place, for weeks, months, even years at a time. We leave something behind in which we’ve attached stories of victory, triumph, adversity, love, and heartbreak. When we leave this microcosm of life lived behind, it’s scary to relive it and to become a part of something we once knew so well which is now so changed by time.

I walk the streets of my hometown at least four or five times before I leave again, I promised myself I always would. It’s the perfect way to jog my memory of everything that has happened to me here in this small beach town. I think one of the most important things is making sure we do keep all of the good and bad that is left in our hometowns. It’s nice to think back to all of the things that amount to who we have become today. A lot of people laugh at the past, they think it’s ridiculous to relive those old times. It’s necessary to let go sometimes, but not of everything, because some things really mattered in the grand scheme of things.

There is all of this time we can’t get back: all of those wasted moments sitting at home on the couch waiting to find something to do, working on homework at a desk in your small single family apartment, putting up the first Christmas tree you actually remember decorating. These moments in time aren’t a waste, they are necessary, they are the building blocks. With the necessities come the luxuries as well: skateboarding to the beach sweaty from the hot July sun, walking home tipsy from your very first high school party; praying your parents were already asleep, driving your first car for the very first time down your street. All of these things are so important to think back to, and while I complain on my couch that I don’t have anyone to hangout with when I return home, I am so eternally grateful for this city and for the friends and relationships I’ve been able to have here. Because at the end of everything, they are each with me every single day. They are a part of me no matter how far away from home I become.