I could sit here and ramble yet again on how uplifting it was to be home again, and how hard it was to leave, but you've heard it all before. Instead, I'd like to write a little love letter to the place and people that raised me, if you don't mind. If you do, idk, go take a Buzzfeed quiz instead, cause here I go.
To New Jersey, New York City, pretty much the entire East Coast, and to all the people who live there, especially the Matarantes:
Miss you already. I miss you everyday I'm not there, and when I'm there, I'm blissful. I'm not kidding when I say that there's at least one thing that happens here in LA every day that makes me thank my lucky stars that I was raised by two North Jersey lovebirds. Everything from the bagels to the road rage makes me proud and keeps me in longing.
Thank you East Coast, for making your women strong, like my mother. The woman is a goddamn superhero and I want to be just like her. My mother spends every single day of her life giving. To my father, to my brother, to her students, to my grandmother, to me. I know she struggles with how much is on her plate, but she doesn't let you know just how much. I never realized how much she gave and how much shit she took from us all until I moved into an apartment of my own and have started to learn what it really takes to be a responsible adult.
Here is my formal apology to her for all the years of rolled eyes and slammed doors:
You are the epitome of a woman, wife and mother to me. Thank you and Dad for not bowing down to my immaturity. Thank you guys for having rules and enforcing them. Thank you for every meal, every dance class, and every PTA meeting. I am so sorry for being a little shit to you. I am so sorry for being such a challenge, and being so ungrateful. If only I knew then what I know now. But now I know, and I'll spend the rest of my life making up for it by trying to make you proud.
Thank you for New York sports, and for the way they bring my family together. Sitting on the couch with my father and brother while we all shout our praises and ridicule at our favorite athletes brings me so much joy and comfort. When I talk sports here in LA, men usually stare at me in astonishment by how much knowledge I actually have about the game, like they can't believe a girl could actually like sports. But when I'm home, my brother and my father shake their heads at me for the absurdity of not understanding immediately why a flag was thrown on a play and I'm knocked back to earth.
East Coast people aren't precious with your feelings. They're not worried about how they come across. They say what they feel and mean what they say, and tell the fucking truth, and it's downright refreshing.
The friendships I have there are unlike anything else I know. They are true, they are confrontational, they are honest. Everyone I love from the East Coast knows me in such a different way than my new (and wonderful and deeply cherished) LA friends. I'm just so much more relaxed there. My accent comes back. I goof around way more and second guess myself way less.
(Disclaimer for my LA friends: this doesn't take away from how lucky I feel to know each one of you. I love you all and you've each brought so much light to my life since I moved here, there's just nothing like a comfort zone, especially for a girl with social anxiety like mine. I'll write a love letter to LA soon so you know just how much you mean to me, too.)
Thank you to New York for being beautiful, resilient, blunt, gritty, full of passion, rough, romantic, fierce and raw. You ignite my soul with every subway ride, every sidewalk, every passerby. It's like you were designed for me, and you miss me like I miss you; that's why every time I'm there you give me the best memories and the most inspiration; you're trying to win me back, and I see you.
To every loved one who I was able to see during my two weeks back, I love you for not getting intimidated by our distance and staying in my life despite it, I love you for your realness, for your humor, for your support, for your encouragement. You keep me going, and you keep me smiling. You hold me accountable and you keep me grounded. I may make kombucha with my roommate and practice meditation now, but I'll never not be that scrappy New Jersey teenager who launched a full-scale, ongoing TRIAL in 8th grade Spanish to settle an argument I was having with a dude in my class. True story, by the way. Right Sabir? ;)
The company you keep is a direct reflection of who you are, and every single one of you make me so proud to have as that reflection.
I'll be home for Christmas, but I'll be holding onto this feeling until then.
Love always,
Me