Feeling at Home in LA

Last week I went to Target. It wasn't an expedition, it wasn't an adventure, it was just a trip to Target because I knew I needed things that Target had like a new bookshelf and bananas. There really aren't many places where you can buy a bookshelf and bananas in one trip. It seemed like an oddly ceremonious step towards adulthood and starting a real life over here in smoggy LA. For the first time I didn't post on every social network that I was going, I didn't organize a house trip, I just walked out the door, got into my car, and went.

It was a rare cool cloudy day, one that up until recently would have made me gloomy and lethargic and would have only encouraged me to stay inside curled up on the couch with a book I'd pretend to read while I napped. However something changed last semester. Suddenly I'm cursing the warm sunny days that make me sweat when I scooter across campus, and I'm begging for the real autumn of my childhood. Everyone talks about how going abroad changes you, but I think they are generally referring to maturing, learning about yourself, growing up blah blah blah. For me I think it changed my general constitution. (Have I mentioned I was quite literally allergic to the sun when I first got back to LA? Allergic. To the sun. I'm not kidding, I would break out in hives when I went outside for too long.)

Just like Amanda Bynes, only it was the truth and I wasn't pretending to be a boy

Of course Target in downtown LA isn't just a Target, it's a CityTarget, which mostly means that it's smaller, you have to pay for parking, and they only have one shelf of Hanukkah decorations come the holiday season. Also, instead of being its own independent massive building/ecosystem/planet, it is tucked into a shiny new shopping center smack dab in the middle of 7th st. along with a food court, an outdoors supply store, and a gym. (Not sure if the gym allows you to take shopping carts on the treadmills to practice super-shopping. Probably it's discouraged.)

Mostly what this meant for me, being an adult and all, was that I could saunter in, promptly decide that I am an adult and I make my own rules, and choose to have a cupcake for dinner. Not any cupcake, but a Sprinkles cupcake! I sat in the deserted food court pavilion area, ate my vegan red velvet cupcake, and thought about what it means to be an adult and to feel at home somewhere. Movies and books love to feed us a lot of nonsense about where your home is (... where the heart is ...where the hearth is ...wherever I'm with you ...there's no place like it etc. etc. etc.) but none of those make sense to me. My heart is a lot of places and I feel at home with lots of people, and what about when you are alone? Can you never feel at home when you're alone? From this point forward I will constantly be leaving people and they will be leaving me and I am sure that my heart will be split further and further into many more pieces, spread across the globe. Will I be like some emotional hobo, sitting on the street corner in my cardboard box and begging for change? (Will that even be a metaphor? Maybe I will actually be homeless and living in a box thanks to my awesome career choice...)

I miss Minnesota frequently, especially on "cold" days like this one when I feel compelled to violently remind everyone dressed in their heavy winter gear that it could be much much worse. There are a lot of things to hate about LA, the traffic, the air quality, the fact that having a warm climate means everyone expects you to have a beach body year round (a fact I conveniently remembered as I ate the last of my cupcake). I miss local music and people so nice that they get made fun of for it. I miss the school system that insists on running even when the snow is so deep that your school bus gets stuck. But there are a lot of things to love here too, like the ocean, the mountains, and never having to leave an extra twenty minutes in the mornings to put on all of your winter clothes and scrape ice off your car. I have good friends, a house (with a hearth I might add) (of the fake variety), and there is never a shortage of things to do.

Come on right? Totally awesome. 

I wandered the aisles of Target at a leisurely pace, plucking cans of SpaghettiOs off the shelf and forgetting to buy dish soap, which was one of two things actually on my list, and I realized that aside from family and friends, there were some things that undeniably made a home.
(And yes I am sort of referring to Target. Because who doesn't love that place? Setting up all the Targets exactly the same? GENIUS! I'll never be lost again!)