am i not a spectacle?
the "star of your hometown" complex is alive and well
It’s that time of the two-week awards ceremony better known as being home for the holidays where both the nostalgia and the novelty of being a guest of your past have already worn off, but the mundanity of it all hasn’t settled in yet — or, rather, I haven’t been able to let go of the idea that it should all be more eventful, that there must be more to my presence. That I’ve worked so hard and missed out on so much, I deserve to be greeted with picket signs and fireworks, to be missed in return. Instead, I regress to somebody I once was, and that person is not a friend of mine. I’m a big believer that one shouldn’t sleep in the same bed pre- and post-frontal lobe development: it’s bad for the brain, even temporarily. I’ve seen everyone I promised to see. I’ve read my old diaries stored in a huge memorabilia box. I’ve revisited my favorite spots. I’ve listened to ceaseless hearsay, done my due diligence gossip exchange, shared exciting and non-exciting updates on my life, throwing in a complaint here and there to restore the balance and keep my ego at bay. I did a lot of things last year that should make me proud — but back here, reality is a slap in the face frozen in time. The only thing worse than missing a place is coming back to realize the place you’ve missed exists no longer.
Conversations with friends steer into copy-paste abstractions: empty promises to see each other again with an indefinite “we should totally do this again soon” — which, if we’re ever honest, is more of a range between six months and ten years. There’s a certain palpable dissolution in the dialogue: being in the same place you once were doesn’t guarantee everyone else wistfully playing along to the symphony of your baton. I’ve time-capsuled my youth and enforced change by leaving, by running away, deliberately putting up a steel wall between the new and the old, but I’m not entitled to everyone’s lives advancing in slow motion. My little world was spinning and changing so much over the years, I’ve gotten addicted to the concept of ‘bringing it back’ via weird revival rituals and reenacting ghostly scenarios that have long faded to the sound of scratched records. I understand why the cogwheels are too rusty to turn smoothly: those who have remained here don’t have a reason to indulge in all my reminiscing, family and friends alike, because there’s nothing for them to reminisce on. What is a magical whirlwind of preserved emotion to me is just a background of lights and chatter to their daily grind. And from the outside looking in, I resemble an old drunk at the pub spitting profanities, slurring “Remember when…” anecdotes, and nobody remembers because nobody cares. Each time, I wait for a cab in the freezing cold, having to remind myself salvation isn’t a place, and I’m only a master of my fate, not this whole town’s. Too foreign to get cozy and too at home to make a second first impression. But I wanted to be a spectacle? If I’m not here to be universally loved and praised, why do I even bother? I’m a star — Mia Goth’s Pearl voice — please, I’m a star…
