Excerpt: June Homecoming

I never really missed Detroit.

Or at least, that's what I told myself. I lied, trying to convince myself that Detroit was long dead. But it wasn't. Who was I kidding - Massachusetts was and is no Michigan. Boston wasn't Detroit. Boston didn't have the 80s to live through and Boston wasn't bemoaning the lost youth of it's dear child the auto industry. It didn't have Coleman Young or Woodward Avenue. And it isn't - most certainly isn't - home.

I never knew where home was for me. I changed schools and houses so much, up from Elementary School to High School. Friends seemed like a passing fad, distant memories before the rise of Social networking sites like Facebook or Myspace. I became cut off from whatever I had left behind, and made damn sure I didn't go back. My mother would ask me if I remembered an old friend from Elementary school, and I lied and said I had no recollection. But it was engrained in my mind who they were, where they were, and how I had changed.

It was all a silly lie - a lie to myself and to my old friends. So I didn't know why I was coming back. Grand Ledge, Cranbrook. Redford, they were all distant past. And Hamtramck. Oh, God, Hamtramck. Can you imagine me - a college grad - sitting outside some abandoned apartment, the faded yellow and blue paint - just crying? I felt - I feel silly. When did this happen? At what point did I decide to just come back and - for once - REMEMBER myself? I don't know.

I just don't know shit.