I returned to my city this week.
When I was 18, I entered Boston with stars in my eyes and new shoes on my feet, lugging a hamper full of Target-fresh dorm essentials into a cramped and creaking elevator 17 stories into the Boston skyline, certain that I'd chosen the best 4 years of my life already. I know now that that wasn't to be; in fact, within the first week I had serious doubts about the world I'd thrown myself into, but I tried to shrug them off as freshmen blues.
It wasn't the drinking or the rape jokes or the cold winter air that did it to me, nor was it the complete and total lack of anyone from my geographical area (and therefore culture, although I didn't understand that at the time). It was the attitude. It was the complete culture of Boston University, the absolute and oblivious assurance with which my classmates clutched the silver spoons they so vehemently denied to me. "I can't believe my parents only give me $600 a month, that's just...not enough." "Can you throw $40 for the handles we need for tonight?" "I just added $100 in dining dollars, my parents will be in for a surprise in a few weeks..."
I tried. I really tried to avoid the cynicism, to relate to the people I met from Napa and New York City and the Hamptons. I really wanted to ignore how terrible it made me feel when they talked about our $40,000 tuition like it was no big deal, sighing that it was so expensive (for their parents), but it would be worth it, right? And there are always loans, right? I tried to convince myself that my awful, ugly, prison-like horror of a dorm building was worth $16,500 a year in room and board. I tried to tell myself that all those hours spent poring over AP textbooks, earning my 4.2, earning my 98% ACT score, were worth landing in Boston, across the river from the school I had once dreamed of attending. The best place to be a college student. The best school my parents' money could buy.
I couldn't do it. I couldn't forget that I was the oldest, that my two younger brothers deserved to have college money too. I couldn't forget that my mother was a social worker who would starve herself, forgo a desperately needed new car, forgo a bigger apartment, to be able to give me the school we thought I deserved. I couldn't forget that all those thousands spent for gen eds, for classrooms dating back to the 1980s, for a university police force that didn't care in the face of rape, voyeurism, hurt students--all those thousands could have done so much good for people really in need. What were my parents really paying for? The experience of a lifetime? I knew college was supposed to be the best 4 years of my life, and I kept waiting and waiting to feel like I was having a dizzying, exhilarating amount of fun and new experiences and lasting memories.
All of this I've thought about before. But when I returned this time last year, when my friends were sophomores, free from the hulking monstrosity of Warren, I knew I wished I had stayed. It was irrational, it was hypocritical, but the allure of my old friends, my old city--I wished I had stayed. I knew I'd made the right fiscal choice in going to Knoxville, but I wanted to go back. I thought I fit there, and stepping back into Boston was like putting on an old pair of Chucks, holes and all. I remember walking down the Commonwealth Mall near Berklee, snapping pictures of the trees and brownstones and being so, so glad to be alive. How I feel now doesn't take away from the wonder of that trip: riding the T again to Copley so I could sit in the library for a few hours, strolling through the Common and revisiting the ducks at the Public Garden, marveling at Kenmore at night, our northern star flashing and glittering atop the BU bookstore.
But when I returned this year, it was different. I was different. I wear my accent proudly, I happily tell people I'm from Tennessee, I can't wait to show off pictures of my cat or tell people where to get good barbecue in Knoxville, if they ever accidentally wander there. I've defended the south to people who have never been there but think we're all backwoods yokels who married our cousins and only think about politics insofar as we want to keep our guns. I don't fit here anymore. I look around and feel apathy, a thing I never expected to feel in Boston. All the strangers passing me, still wearing designer clothing, still carrying their designer bags, speaking Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, English, all the people desperately trying to "BE YOU" by being just like their peers--I feel like they see me as I move by and know I'm not one of them, I'm not someone buying into their spiel. I am not a prisoner to BU's exorbitant tuition. I can freely say that I think they extort their students, and for once, I can honestly say Thank God that I am not here for that. I miss driving. I miss the mountains. I miss stars. I waited for this trip, anticipated it, but I'm counting the days now that I'm here. Who knew. Who knew it would be this way.
Growing pains suck. This is the second one I've suffered this year, but with each step I'm growing. I love my friends here, and I'm savoring every moment with them, but as for the city? I would sooner see them in Knoxville than here, and once again I'm reminded that letting places become anchors rather than people is unwise in the end.
