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Somehow Eugene became home

There came a point when I began to refer to Eugene as ‘home’. It didn’t happen in one memorable moment. At first it was unnoticeable. Of course, I call wherever I live home. I called the dorms home–I would text my friends after chemistry and say, I’m on my way home. But I am also the person that calls the hotel home when I’m on a trip. 

is this unintentionally doxxing myself?? mom, let me know if i need to remove this photo.

This type of home I’m referring to, this homebase, this image that comes into my head when someone asks, where’s home? It shifted recently. I think it happened when I was driving back to Eugene after spring break and I just felt it. It being, I was truly on my way home, to my house in Eugene. Of course, in a way it’s all figurative language–home very well may just be what we call the place we sleep at night. What I’m trying to convey here is the fundamental shift that occurs when your childhood bedroom feels foreign to sleep in. Not just because I haven’t been home in a while, but because the pink walls and the tapestry hanging up are grating to my inner psyche. Because the walls feel suffocating, and the house feels so tiny, even though it’s larger than my college house. 

Growing out of your childhood home and your hometown is like growing out of a pair of jeans. It feels like I’m screaming at the mirror, these used to be my favorite jeans!! They make me look so good!! Yet that can’t, that won’t, make my jeans fit forever (the sisterhood of traveling pants, I’m looking at you…) 

I used to crave going home, like a meal I’ve had on my mind since Monday afternoon and finally get to eat Friday night. At the end of the past two school years I was practically bubbling over with glee to go back to Oregon City, to drive down the streets I am so familiar with. The streets where I learned to drive, the neighborhoods in which I’ve run hundreds of miles, both alone, and with my mom and sisters. But the last time I was driving towards Oregon City felt jarringly different. 

I think what has contributed to this change is where I live now. Living in a dorm and a sorority house was so fun! but after a year, I was definitely ready to be back in my home with my family and dogs. 

It still feels weird to refer to my family’s home as a ‘childhood’ home. (If it feels like I drone on about childhood or youth or growing up a lot in these things, it’s because it’s always on my mind). I told my roommates that sometimes I don’t even feel like I’m in college. I’ve never been someone who had this vivid, perfectly crafted image of what college would look like. I knew where I was going to school for years, and it just felt like a continuation of everything I had always been doing. I guess I felt the same about high school. It’s in retrospect where I truly accept that’s where I was, what I experienced. I look back at high school memories and I can say, that was so high school! But I can’t look back on recent memories and be like wow…so college! Perhaps because it’s what I am currently experiencing, so being nostalgic over last week doesn’t feel quite right. (And also, I probably have an exam to study for, or work to do, so it’s not really the time to be sappy). 

I’m staying in Eugene this summer and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve got an internship that will let me cosplay being a grown up and dreams to become a ‘tourist in Eugene’. And I’ll happily return to Oregon City and sleep in my room with the pink walls and a whiteboard with a note written four years ago by Dimitra that says: To do: Be sexy 

featuring my imperative and incredibly germane to-do list, a countdown of days of work I had left in summer 2024, a little note from my high school AP psych teacher—thats incredibly faded—which said, “for knowing who Joan Didion is” after I brought up her death, and a flamingo clearly from the London zoo

I’ll excitedly eat the meals my mom and dad lovingly prepare, and in turn I’ll make some of my own for my family. I’ll run with my mom, I’ll walk my dogs, I’ll drive by my elementary school on the way to Fred Meyer. Yet I don’t think it will feel the same as it once did. 

I heard a lot of shit about Eugene growing up–positive, negative, indifferent–and I still hear a lot of shit. I had the tales of my sister and my mom’s college experiences floating into my mind, helping to craft an image of what the next four years of my life may look like. Yet I never quite understood, or grasped, that one day the streets of Eugene would feel as familiar as the ones in Oregon City. Eugene, to me, kind of felt like and symbolized a stepping stone to get to me to the next place. It was the layover on the way to the destination. A town where I’d spend a few years in, but not develop a strong connection to. I grew up coming here, and I didn’t expect it to ever feel very different.

I always forget how easy things leave and how long it takes for things to come. It’s like getting in shape. It takes months, years, to feel fit. And so easily it vanishes. It takes years to build relationships, and in one conversation, they can quickly fold. I never knew a time in which Oregon City wasn’t my default setting of home. I never thought a time would come in which it didn’t quite feel like the place I know best, a place where I’d choose to be over anywhere else. 

Oregon City is another place that gets a lot of shit (from people who actually know the town). But it’s the place that raised me. Now Eugene is the place raising me. I know it’s not everyone’s favorite place. Yet I love this place, and my neighborhood, and the tall, green trees, the sound of the Willamette rushing, the wisteria outside my house that bloomed and died in the span of a few weeks.

One day, perhaps in a year, I very well could be back in Oregon City. But I’d say that right now we are on a break. A break much needed. I know one day we could go back to what we once were, if I do happen to end up back there. I would also be fine if we we didn’t get back together…but that doesn’t come from a place of hate—I love Oregon City, always will—I would just like to see more of the world, learn more about myself, meet new people.

What this year has taught me, this jump from Schaefer Drive to Harris Street being my definition of home, is that if you love somewhere enough, and you fill it with the people and things you love, it will love you right back. So, maybe what I’ve learned isn’t that I’ve grown out of Oregon City and instead grown into Eugene, but that it's how you fill your life, wherever you are, that makes a place feel like a beating heart, pumping blood full of love and joy and acceptance and anticipation into your system.  

(sure i’ve got my house set as home in my phone but lets disregard that and take this as a cute symbol)