I just returned home from visiting an old friend I haven't seen in over a year, in the area where I lived during my early teen years (ages 11 to 14). Before going over to see him, I took a big detour into a neighorhood where I lived at the time, pretty much for the first time as an adult. (Before, I visited my friend in the area, but never detoured into that neighborhood, since its memory was too painful to get anything beneficial out of the visit. My early teen years were truly, literally, the WORST years of my entire life. The bullying I got was very severe, I had no friends, my parents "knew" that badgering and punishing me were effective in improving my grades, I kept lapsing in and out of depression with no hope of medical treatment (all I got was counterproductive talk therapy), and my parents came close to a divorce. It was like a nightmare I couldn't wake up from.
So I walked and drove around the neighborhood that I still associate with pain and misery. And it gave me the weirdest feeling. I felt like brain in a vat, and all I was seeing was part of The Matrix. Here's what I did/observed.
* The supermarket where my family did most of their shopping trips. That was where I constantly begged for snacks, which usually cost $2.99 or less, and almost never got them. It felt SO WEIRD to be able to just dump items into my shopping cart, without having to ask anyone. One moment, I saw a kid begging for something (I don't remember what he was holding), and I had to walk quickly to an isolated aisle to take a deep breath.
* The weathered, but ornate two-story building, with a limestone facade and Victorian architechure. I always walked past it, and enjoyed looking at it, but never went in. It had been torn down, and replaced with a generic-looking red brick one, four stories tall. No idea what was in that building, then or now.
* The KFC where I would beg my parents to take me. As I'm sure you figured out, they almost never did, except once or twice as a reward for making the honor roll. It's still there, but has been rebuilt into a newer design.
* The locally-owned convenience store, where I always went to get Mexican ice cream pops. It's still there, looking just as it did 16 years ago. I went inside and bought one ice cream pop (not the same brand, though), for nostalgia's sake, which now cost $1.29 instead of $0.79. That and a 24-oz can of Steel Reserve, just because I can.
* The house where I lived at the time. That's where the punishments, the yelling by my parents (at me and at each other), the borderline divorce, and all the wonders of my early teenage years happened. I parked my car across the street from it, and smoked a cigarette, as a quiet "fu** you!" to that house and all it symbolized. (Why smoke? Smoking represents the ability to give myself small pleasures whenever I want, which I couldn't do as a kid.)
* My K-8 elementary school. Still looks as it did before, save for the new signage. I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. Even when I parked my car and walked on the sidewalk along it. It was just a building to me, no different than, say, a post office. Not even for a second did I feel any nostalgia.
* The big dollar store, where my family always went to buy household stuff, pots and pans, clothes, books, etc. The building is still there, but the store had closed, and was carved up into a Subway, an H&R Block, and a few other corporate chains. It now looks nothing like the old store.
* The neighborhood looked a little run down, worse than before, but nothing horrible, either. A few lampposts now sport police cameras. There were some tough youths standing on a street corner, but they didn't even look at me when I walked past them. If those same people saw me when I was 14, I'm very sure they'd at least bark (like a dog) in my direction, if not give me crap just for the thrill of it.
* All stoplights were replaced, from the old incandescent ones, that were tiny and looked like they'll fall off any minute, to the modern LED ones, mounted to a sturdy pole. Some, but not all, parts of the major street had new lampposts, which now shined white instead of the yellow-orange I had come to know.
I'm slightly emotionally drained from that visit, although nothing depressive, either. It felt almost like a veteran returning to a battlefield where he fought, and finding spent mortar shells there. (My apologies to actual veterans: not to discredit your experience, but I couldn't think of any other comparison.) I don't even know what to feel, actually. I'm kind of glad I visited the neighborhood to give myself some sort of closure, but I probably won't be going back to that neighborhood any time in the near future.
So that's my story. What are your thoughts?
22 Dec 2013, 3:08 pm
