Lessons Learned: Not Spider but Man – No Way Home

If you’re anything like me (and for your sake, I hope you’re not), you’ll find yourself counting down the weeks. “I’ve got midterms this week, so I just gotta survive till the weekend.” “One more paper due and then I can breathe.” “One more project –” But how many “one-more’s” can I get through? How many “one-more” weeks, “one-more” assignments? I can’t seem to remember when my days started to blur together. The days of my life have been reduced to nothing more than “one-more’s.” And when it feels like you’re drowning and you can’t breathe, spring break comes along and it’s suddenly “one more week until spring break.” Then, it seems manageable. But all I want to do is to go home.

It doesn’t take a spider bite (although I have been bit by a spider before — it just sent me to the hospital) to recognize the heroic feat that is a first-generation student leaving home for college. Even if you aren’t first-generation, college is a daunting journey, one that is the beginning of our so-called “adult lives.” But, God, do I need an adult. Because it seems like every day, I am barely managing to get by. Barely remembering to eat enough meals (intermittent fasting or eating disorder?). Barely remembering important due dates. Barely remembering to breathe. When I do take a breath, it seems like ages before I can muster up the courage and motivation to get back into the rise and grind. Because I simply do not want to be rising and grinding anymore. Chasing a bag is a full-time job, and that’s on top of being a full-time student.

I am fortunate enough to be able to go home. My humble home in San Jose next to the taqueria and Burger King with the hella good fries. I hope there are more neighborhoods next to a taqueria and Burger King because, if not, I just doxxed myself.

And so I go to the airport. Meet my parents and come home to gỏi cuốn cá hấp, spring rolls with steamed whitefish. A nice change of pace from the Vietnamese restaurants around campus that serve unextraordinary spring rolls with pork belly and shrimp. That’s not even considering the ones that market their egg rolls as spring rolls (criminal!). So, as I change and unpack my bags in what is now a shell of my childhood bedroom, I enjoy a nice mom-made dinner and catch up with my parents. And the feeling hits.

I’m not really home.

My bedroom is stripped bare of the trinkets and knick knacks that give it personality. The things I own that proudly exclaim, “I was here!” My parents are older, more weathered. They tell me about how work is going, the good and the bad. How family politics are rapidly changing (always for the worst). The city I grew up in looks different. The stores I found myself frequenting have closed. Local businesses come in and out of existence, and everything that wasn’t cemented into the ground was turned into a new parking structure (God bless America). The worst of all? The expanded bike lanes on the side of the road that now cover half of the streets. Because who the fuck rides bikes in the hood?

Throughout that week of break, it seems that time goes by for everyone else. Everyone but me. My parents have their 9-to-5’s. My high school friends are away at college (since USC’s break doesn’t seem to align with any other school in the country). My friends at USC are either in Los Angeles or Cabo (the duality of man). So I find myself in a house that’s no longer a home. With nothing but my cat that bites and the month of lectures that I swore I’d watch over break.

In a desperate attempt to make the most of the break, I found myself driving to Fremont for a night, meeting with my high school best friend and chronically online best friend — a compromise between San Jose and Berkeley. I’d pour my heart out, catching them up on all the things and people that have wronged me, and they, the same. I find myself uttering the words, “I want to go home,” before catching myself. “I mean I want to go back to L.A.” But why was it that I felt that way? I guess somewhere along the years, I found a place to call home in L.A. And as much as I love hating on L.A., I actually — wait for it — have friends here. Crazy, right?

So, I find that home is no longer a physical location. It isn’t a place with four walls. Home is now an idea, an abstract. Home is where I find myself at peace. Home is eating dinner with family. It’s getting coffee with friends. It’s doing the things you want with the people you love. And, lately, I find myself lost in thought, looking for moments where I can be at home.

Man Truong is a junior writing on reflections made in life. In a world full of different personal beliefs and philosophies, he makes sense of it in his column, “Lessons Learned,” which runs every other Friday.