Dear California

By Sarah Phillips

Photo provided by Sarah Phillips

Sometimes it feels impossible to stop missing where you're from. After all, nowhere you move will ever replicate the same feelings you felt in that original place. Nothing, not even your fickle brain, can hold to the memories you made quite like the moment you make them.

For me, these memories of where I'm from include windy weekend trips to the bay in my dad’s convertible, walking to the 7-11 across the street from my high school for a slurpee after school and sneaking food into movies with my friends. So when I moved my sophomore year of high school I had an intense longing for that sense of reliability again. But how can you go to the bay when it's a thousand miles away? How can you ride in your dad's convertible when he sold it for a more reliable car for his new commute to work? How do you recreate San Jose, California in Ballwin, Missouri?

There are no straightforward answers to these questions and even trying to answer them or experiment with them will drive you mad. Part of the reason these memories weighed so heavily on me, personally, was because of my new reality being so bleak. It was during COVID and my new school had people who had known each other for forever and because of that, I was on the outside, watching other people make the new memories I wanted so desperately to create. This led to a passionate hatred for Missouri that could have easily been quelled with real connections and memories, much like the ones I had made in California.   

I found when I went back to California though, that very little of the memories were left to me. My old house had become a victim of modern renovations, my best friend had moved schools and had easily found friends and the restaurants I used to visit had been replaced by even more hipster fusion cuisine. Because of this, visiting felt like I was a painted-over scratch on the wall. Where every new person who ever passed you, now painted over with a glossy exterior, has no idea you were there and had no idea of the impression you left on the place around you. In that sense, it’s almost as if I was never there at all. 

This desire to return to a place that once was is a dream that I, with time and care, realized was dead on arrival. This was mostly due to the acceptance of the new world around me, one that was filled with new daily routines and a revitalization of hope. After all, you can’t recreate memories in their full glory nor can you restore anything to the way it once was. All that’s left is to create new memories with the new and old people and places you can now fully experience when you’re not stuck in the past. If I still lived in the past I never would have gone to college in Missouri, studying something I'm passionate about with friends who support me in every endeavor. I never would have adopted my bunny or realized my passion for caring for animals. Most importantly, I never would have found community. Which is something, I realized, that is not born overnight but rather cultivated from groups of people’s shared experiences and memories that are now used to create something new, something special. 

In the end, I replaced trips to the bay with hikes in local state parks, trips to the mall with trips to boba with my mom and walking to 7-11 to walking to a local coffee shop to get work done. No, it will never be the same as my childhood. But as with all things, we change along with our surroundings. We’re not meant to stay the same or to live in memories but rather grow from them and have them influence our future actions and ideals and have that create the person we were meant to be.