Feature image via Shutterstock
Y’all, we made it! We’re here inside the Friday Open Thread, which means it’s FRIDAY. Isn’t that wonderful? Welcome to this weekly hotbed of debauchery, cat gifs and feelings. I’m so happy to see you!
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about home as a concept. In the last eight years I’ve lived in 11 different houses and apartments in three different cities in two different countries, repeatedly packing up my favorite flannel and my poetry books and carting them around in trucks and on planes. I have called a lot of places home, created communities and put down roots. But there is something about being HOME, in Dallas, where I grew up with my family in the suburbs and went from squealing infant to full-grown voting-age human that makes me feel rooted and lets me see myself clearly.
On my most recent visit to my parents’ place, I realized that I have a few routine activities that really make Dallas and its various uniform suburban hellholes feel like home, things I do every time I go to Dallas that I don’t do anywhere else (even though I probably could). They include:
- Eat cheese enchiladas at the Blue Goose Cantina on Lower Greenville
- Try to buy jeans at the mall until the word “skinny” swims in front of my eyes and I give up
- Buy at least one exquisitely weird item at Buffalo Exchange
- Have exactly one fight with my mom until neither of us quite know why we’re mad anymore
- Dance alone to the entirety of Colored By Numbers by Culture Club on my record player
- Make plans to go two-stepping that inevitably fall through
What makes home home for you? Maybe you don’t identify much with your home town, but like, what’s that place that makes your heart beat get regular? What do you do there? What does it smell like?
Plus, as always, please tell me about your week! Or your plans for the weekend. Or your fur friends! I want it all. Grab a drink and a pack of Fig Newtons and let’s gab, fam.
p.s. Feel free to use this as an opportunity to keep talking about A-Camp. I see you.
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