I.
When I graduated college, I felt nothing. Okay, perhaps I felt a lot, but unpacking every fleeting rush of dread or even pride would require Ritalin and absolute silence.
Yes, I am a writer, therefore I should welcome psychoanalysis, maybe even more so because I majored in psychology in addition to English. But, in the past three months, I broke up with my college sweetheart, finished my seventeen-year softball career, and lost the privilege of saying, “Being a student is my full time job!”
Adults walk a tightrope each time they bring up post-grad plans. Some of them know the question triggers existential panic, while others await a response with excited eyes and hopeful grins. I think my dead eyes and tight mouth let people know that, if they do ask my plans, they must use open with something like: “Okay, Miss Adult, I know this question is scary, buuuuut…”
If I’m not close with the person, I will recite my go-to statement: “I was going to go to grad school, but my professor said it was a waste of time, so now my only hope is to read my diaries at a bar and get discovered like David Sedaris.”
I do want the David Sedaris thing to happen; I’m not some sort of liar. It’s just that, if I am more comfortable with the person asking, I will probably do a lot of groaning before I speak. Or maybe I’ll give a more practical response—a more boring response. “I’m doing assistant work for the family of a famous dead jazz musician.”
Okay, it sounds cooler on paper. Also, don’t tell my boss I called my job boring.
Still, independent of the coolness of my job, I am a post-grad living at home, which I don’t have a problem with, but stigma lies within the walls which framed your childhood. And I suppose I’m insecure… so maybe I do have a problem with it.
No one has looked at me funny for saying I plan on living at home for a year. I’ve even made new post-collegiate friends—friends two or three years my senior who live in their own apartments. They don’t come over to my place and watch as my parents do my laundry, nor do they overhear my mother on the phone arguing with my bank. The older friends I drive to; my younger college friends come hang out with me and the whole Roman-Johnston clan, because to them I’m still Zettey From the Block (Skidmore College)… And I don’t like that I just said Zettey From the Block, but I’m keeping it.
One of my best friends, Connor, just moved from Vermont to Boston, where he is now living with his friend from elementary school and working as a copywriter for the Boston Guardian. He and I wrote for Skidmore College’s satirical newspaper, so I might be mildly jealous that he also just had two articles published for a Vermont satirical newspaper with some funny name I can’t remember. While Connor is living both his and my young-adult dream, I am working for family friends and coaching local softball teams. My big steps in adulthood include making my own protein shakes each morning and making an appointment for a local shrink. The two aforementioned “jobs” I had well before finishing college; not being a lazy brat was a more recent development.
II.
Currently, I am on a flight from San Francisco to Seattle. As a northeastern native who has just reached the age at which I can leave the northeast, I found it necessary to explore my options. In my later college years, I started asking people, adults especially, where they could see me living. Most everybody said the west coast, perhaps because I’m gluten free and have seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
Or maybe it’s because I want to be a writer—a more renowned writer than I am now. For someone with social anxiety, I like attention a fair bit. I passively suggest to my friends and that they share my essays on Facebook. True friends will add comments like “My bff is so talented!!!!! Definitely worth a read!” because they understand my need for an audience.
At my house, after school had ended, I held a reading for my parents and dogs. I read essays from my senior capstone titled “The Liberal Arts Experience,” in which I discuss love, politics, and family baggage.
How are you supposed to be a creative nonfiction writer when everybody you want to write about is still alive? Is this why kids murder their parents?
Periodically throughout the reading I had to stop short and say, “Nope, I can’t say that.” Topics included embarrassment, abandonment, divorce. My parents surely assumed they had embarrassed me, but—though all these topics are standard when it comes to writing about family—I don’t reckon they’ve thought too hard about my views on their marriage or parenting skills.
III.
Now I’m in Seattle. My cousin and her boyfriend are letting me stay in their one-bedroom apartment off of Olive Street or Road or Avenue. The “bedroom” is the entire upstairs, and it overlooks the living room—no walls separating them. It’s an innovative use of space, and I’m wondering if it’s technically a studio apartment, as it really doesn’t have multiple rooms. The wooden floor meets carpeted stairs as they ascend to the single bathroom and then the “bedroom,” upon which a queen-sized mattress lay. Because sound travels freely in an apartment with no internal walls, I rose when they did this morning, at the reasonable time of seven o’ clock. I don’t intend to complain; I enjoyed getting an early start, as I had a lot to see.
First, I needed food. Because my cousin’s refrigerator held mostly condiments and beer, I took to Google Maps for a modest diner. There happened to be one down Olive Street or Road or Avenue, less than a mile away: “Glo’s.”
Olive Way, it’s called; I know that now.
Upon entering the diner, which had pale yellow walls decorated with various black and white pictures of famous movie stars like Audrey Hepburn, I realized how both small and full it was. The hostess/waitress scanned the floor before undergoing an internal battle in deciding whether or not she would seat me, a lone adventurer, at a table meant for four. She did. And—as I ordered, waited for, and ate my food—I noticed groups of would-be customers waiting outside to be seated. I felt guilty and special.
My tour of west coast diners didn’t end at Glo’s. The next day, I patroned a funkier, more old-school diner.
Sitting in Lost Lake Cafe, a gluten free benedict before me, I wouldn’t have expected to later talk to my ex on the phone for two hours and four minutes while standing outside a weed dispensary, but Seattle is a place of twists and turns.
It was the waiter behind the counter who immediately asked “You smoke weed?” when I told him I was a tourist. I nodded (sorry, Mom). He recommended “Uncle Ike’s,” a chain dispensary that my cousin eventually told me was too mainstream for her (I should’ve gone to Ruckus, Diner Dude’s other recommendation). But Uncle Ike’s was satisfactory, though I wouldn’t know what to compare it to.
Fellow customers of mine, two twenty-somethings, initiated small talk in the line I perhaps had no business being in. Seemingly innocuous packages of candy decorated the walls, along with bags of pre-rolled joints and other genres of herb. I told them, “I’ve never done this before,” to which they responded with: “Where are you from?”
It’s funny how hometowns define you. My statement revealed that I was an east coaster; they didn’t need to ask. As it turns out, one of the twenty-somethings either attended or had a friend who attended to the same college as my sister: Wesleyan—a typical liberal arts school in Connecticut with vegan dining and reefer madness. Maybe they were originally from the east coast and did what I hope to do, which is move out to the west coast once I’ve transitioned from a college kid to a real life adult.
Before I did that, however, I had to tie up some loose ends. You might be wondering about that two-hour phone call with my ex—you know, the one outside the weed dispensary. Sometimes it takes three tearful conversations at school, four late-night phone calls, and one two-hour early afternoon call from across the country to get closure. It would have been too chunky of a sentence to include my visit to his house in Massachusetts three days later, but yeah, that happened too.
I called to update him on my whereabouts regarding another guy I had “dated” after him—someone we were all in the satirical newspaper with (not Connor… ew). I didn’t think it was weird to consult my ex about a new flame, but I understand why my reader may question my sanity; I question it everyday. It was supposed to be a lighthearted catch-up session. We were trying to remain friends. Inevitably, however, I asked about his new relationship, and we spiraled down the rabbit hole, hence the two hours.
I visited him, because I was in town for a Harry Styles concert after I had returned from the west coast. Yes, I went from San Francisco to Seattle to Connecticut to Boston in the span of ten days; again, I question my sanity everyday.
Mainly, I wanted to see his family, who will always, in some way, be my family too. My ex felt fine about it until he didn’t—until his girlfriend didn’t.
I get it. There was no reason to fight his wanting space, as part of me looks forward to ejecting the disc of our highlight reel and putting in a new one in which he only makes cameos (this is already a dated metaphor). Tying up loose ends. Taking charge of beginnings.
IV.
Before my grand adventure to San Francisco and Seattle, I would have been fine setting up camp in Boston or Philly or even New York, but now—after prancing along the shore with unleashed dogs, taking pictures in front of the Mission District murals, and buying legal weed—I can’t quite swallow the potential fate of devoting myself to some publishing firm in smoggy, slimy New York City for ten years when I could be writing beside the Golden Gate Bridge. Look at me, already becoming a west coast snob. I suppose I should adjust my attitude and become more free-spirited.
