Rant & Rave
Rant & Rave
A feeling of anticipation begins to tangle with the slight buzz of homesickness and a craving for mom's cooking. Yet another semester has passed and it's time again that we return home for the summer. Homecoming
is bittersweetThe reality, of course, is visiting old family and distant friends can often be bittersweet. Home is always where the heart is, but it can be difficult accepting we are growing up, times are changing and things really aren't the way they used to be.
Over these past couple of months, I came to terms with the fact that my family and friends were getting older, and yet their lives were strangely devoid of change. My father still has the talent for talking in his sleep and my mother still insists on lecturing me about nothing in particular.
My childhood friends still think they're cool drinking 40's (40-ounce beers) and smoking the same old cigarettes in the back yard where we all grew up. They still work at the same places they worked at when I left for school, and they say the pay still sucks.
We talk about good times only in the past tense and when asked about college I feel the need to lie. "It's not all it's cracked up to be; you're not missing much."
Familiarity may, in fact, be the greatest security, but home is still bittersweet. I hate that. Home used to be everything and now I feel so distant from all the things that once defined me.
I love my family and friends but they feel tragically stagnant. I wonder if it's wrong to feel that, and if it's wrong, then who can be blamed but myself? After all, I left home.
No one can relate to my experience at college, aside from those who are living the college experience. Unfortunately, my best friends have taken a different path in life. Those old, familiar relationships will probably never feel quite right ... not as they once did. But if my friends are happy with the direction of their lives, then I am happy for them.
When my parents have retold every story and my friends have reminisced over every childhood memory, that is when the minutes begin to turn into hours, and the hours into days.
They are good memories, of course, but they are old and unchanging. I could have stayed, passed up traveling and college for the alternatives. I could be in the back yard smoking and drinking away the sour taste of regret. But that was never what I wanted.
Home is where my memories live and I will always enjoy returning, but I could never stay.
Regret is in the eyes of my old friends and age is in the eyes of the family. They mean the world to me and I owe it to them to live this life.
Eric Saqui just graduated from Loyola Marymount
University with a degree in business administration.Rant & Rave is a Tuesday Star-Bulletin feature
allowing those 12 to 22 to serve up fresh perspectives.
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