to boston, how i love you 

 Dionna Santucci 

I often wonder if my younger self would be proud of who I am today. 

I’ve struggled with anxiety all my life. And when I say “anxiety”, I mean Social Anxiety Disorder. I mean Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I mean that everyday, crippling fear of the unknown that makes you want to curl up in a fetal position and waste away with the day. If you’re wondering if an eight year old was really laying in bed, conquered by terror and scared to leave the safe-haven that was her room—yes, she was. 

I was. 

I won’t bore you with ages of diagnosis or dates of appointments, but I will tell you that I was 14 when I knew I didn’t want to go to college in the same state I had attended highschool, whatever state that may have been. With this realization came another, one that contradicted this counterdesire: I wouldn’t ever be brave enough to leave home. Of course, this was ridiculous—not because the idea of never leaving home is an absurd one, as I would later find out, but because my “home” was an unstable one. Not “unstable” in the emotional sense. My parents were fine. Like any parent, they have their flaws, but they’re, you know, fine. When I say “unstable”, I say it with the same hesitation I say “home.” “Home” was a plane ride between states, across deserts and tropics, cities and suburbs. “Home” was the Home Depot boxes that littered the houses I had lived in, never fully emptying out before the next move. “Home” was the blazing-orange sun of Arizona, before it was the saltwater shores of Oahu, before it was the cool, smoggy night breeze of Las Vegas. 

I had grown comfortable with my surroundings in Vegas. If anything was home, this would have to be it. I had a few good friends, I was a part of the highschool chamber choir, and I

didn’t hate the idea of staying in Vegas. Sure, I absolutely despised the heat. And The Strip. And the suburban sprawl of the American west. But with time, I could see myself growing into those things. Anything for some type of stability, some sense of forever. 

I remember the night my dad told me we were moving so viscerally. It was a warm June evening and we were all sitting on the couch: Me, my two sisters, my mom, my dad. One minute, I was fine—marginally depressed like most highschool sophomores, but fine—and the next, I was sobbing. Moving? Again? I didn’t have to ask where we were moving to, I wasn’t going to, anyways, but my dad told me before I could even consider the question. Indiana? Kill me now. I cried harder that night than I had ever cried before. Hot tears streamed down my face and made a mess of the glasses I had refused to take off. I wanted to see my parents' faces, I wanted to remember what they looked like when they told me we were leaving “home” again. 

And the funny thing is, I don’t. Out of all of the things I do remember from that night, the one thing I swore I would never forget is gone forever. 

We didn’t move until the summer before my senior year. We were a few months into the first COVID-19 lockdown, a month or so into the release of Taylor Swift’s Folklore. By the time we were halfway across the country and moved into the house, I don’t think I had felt anything but anxiety for more than a few minutes at a time in a while. Valparaiso, Indiana, a small town just outside of the Chicago border. A city that does nothing but sleep, Valpo was the type of place people get stuck in. Ask any one of the teacher’s at the local highschool, chances are their grandfather or father or they themselves attended the church down the street, ate at the local pizza restaurant when they were a teen, drove for their first car down that one intersection downtown.

The entirety of the latter part of 2020 is nothing but a black mass in my mind. I started seeing a therapist in October, and in November, a week or two before my 18th birthday, I knew I could leave this dreadful town in one of two ways. Perhaps I have my cowardice to thank for whatever pushed me to get the hell out of dodge. I applied to schools far from there, two local schools “just in case.” I didn’t apply to any schools out west. If I was going to do this, I was sure as hell going to go for it. Of course I was nervous, I was scared shitless. The east coast was meant for extroverted skinny girls, for the people who thrived off of bright lights and adored busy streets. Who was I, compared to the colossal skyscrapers of New York? The age-old brownstone of Boston? I applied to Emerson College—a last minute decision once I came to the correct conclusion that NYU would eat me alive—on a whim. 

And then I got accepted. 

After the letter came, well, everything else was just secondary. Finals flew by, graduation came and went, my therapy sessions continued as normal, I got a job at the local Barnes and Noble. I worked hard to love some part of Valpo before I left. I wanted to at least appreciate it’s greenery or the stars in the night sky—something for me to come back to on holidays and summer breaks. I was excited to leave, always, but something kept gnawing at the lining of my stomach, at the ivory-white bone deep beneath the muscle in my arms. I felt heavy with worry. Dread. Have you ever been so scared of yourself? Of what you would do once you were left alone, no one around you—left to your own devices? What would you become? 

Move-in went by quickly. It was a rainy day, hordes of parents and students and “move-in assistants” sloshed around in damp clothes from hall to hall. My dad helped me hang up one last command hook, and handed me one last item from a box. And then I was alone. Spending over a year with no one to say hello to you is enough to convince you that you’re not worth talking to,

but I wasn’t really alone. My roommates took me to dinner at the dining hall, and then we stayed up till one in the morning, just talking. The next morning, I went outside for an orientation event, and a wave of emotion overcame me. I looked at these historic buildings around me, the tall trees of The Commons, the steaming entrances of the T, and I had never felt happier. I loved Boston 

more with every minute I was away from Indiana, every smile I shared with my roommate, every perfect stranger I met at an event and shared my Instagram with. I started to feel like I was at home, not the kind of home I had grown accustomed to, but a definition of home that lay buried in my psyche with the milky memories of me as a toddler. 

Is this what home feels like? 

The pigeons that welcome me to my dorm building look familiar to me now, and I have named a chosen few. I worry that the Mediterranean restaurant down the street will close. I have memorized the walking paths towards all of the local CVS stores, and I know which one has what. Mayor Michelle Wu has seen my face, looked me in the eyes—if only for a second. The MBTA system still confuses me from time to time, but I know how to get to my favorite record store in Cambridge. The winter weather makes me grumble with the locals walking down Tremont street, but I secretly love the icy bitterness that nips at my extremities. 

I never thought I would leave “home.” Friends would come and go, addresses would change, but I would always stay—not physically, never that, but mentally. A part of me was convinced that I was cursed to be an involuntary nomad for the rest of my life. At one point, I got so comfortable with “home,” that I stopped believing I even wanted to leave. It was only through a jungle of nerves and late-night panic attacks, applications and financial aid, that I was able to free myself. A baptism by fire. Not everything is always peachy; I still cry, I still see my therapist via telehealth. Things are different now, though, because there's a crescent moon permanently etched with ink into my side. I share inside jokes with people again, and the lady at the vegan-vegetarian station in our dining hall knows my name. I have people who I can share my secrets with, and who will return the favor readily. 

So, would my younger self be proud of who I am today? Well, I guess it’s hard to say. I have done things to myself—cruel, terrible things that I wouldn’t blame her for hating me for. I have put myself through hell, and she has had to drag me out. Memories held on to me for dear life, begging me not to let go of her. I have thrown away every diary she ever wrote in, and I 

have cursed her name for things she was merely a consequence of. But, I still listen to her favorite singer, and I can make friends on my own now. I set up my own play dates. And I no longer allow the unknown to control my day, I approach it with a hesitant, but ready embrace.