suddenly, it's december
and you're not seventeen anymore. and you haven't been seventeen for a very long time, but sometimes you need to remind yourself.
i’m writing to you from my hometown
It’s 42 degrees and cloudy in central Pennsylvania, and I no longer know what to call it. To my friends in Los Angeles, it’s home. Are you going home for the holidays? Where’s home for you?
But when I enter my bedroom I don’t feel an overwhelming wave of nostalgia. My family only moved here once I started college, it does not hold my childhood memories within its wall. If anything the creaks in the floor echo with painful moments: the pandemic and the depressive episodes of a recent college graduate.
This is where I struggled through Covid-19. It’s where I would run to when I needed space to mourn the loss of my five-year relationship. It is where I watched my childhood dog Penny decline in health and eventually pass. When I return, I feel myself slipping into the body that held those experiences. I find it difficult to remain present and with each passing minute, I become less of myself.
And by the end of my stay, I am seventeen again. I am lonely and wondering about my place in the world. I have not yet gone to college or traveled across the country on my own. I no longer remember who I am without the past year attached to me.
I wish there was someone to pinch me, some spirit to wake me in a cold sweat with memories of my life in the west. Or a vision of my future to pull me by the hair and remind me of what I have yet to do, to wake me from this madness, to catch me as I fall back into my seventeen-year-old self who did not yet know what she was capable of.