Homegoing

On leaving the city that witnessed the last eleven years of my life.

Healthy Futures is free to read and always will be. Paid subscribers get Wellness Debrief, The Shelf, and a few paid essays per month. If you’re not ready for that but want to support the work, you can also leave a tip via PayPal. Now, let’s get into it.

Early next month, I’m moving back to North Carolina. The reason why is unnerving, but relatively straightforward. I’m out of money, I’m still unemployed, and I got that dreaded eviction notice taped to my door last week. Even if I could come up with the back rent, it would only delay the inevitable, so I figured I’d call it before a “Scarlet E” was attached to my rental record. This is the culmination of an ugly year, one marred by rejection and instability.

Still, for some reason, I feel at peace. It’s a blessing that I’ll be closer to my family—closer than I was in college, even—and I have a place to live while I get back on my feet. D.C. has been my home for 11 years. I moved here in 2015 on an unseasonably cold day. The wind chill was below zero, and I’d never been that cold before. I came in on a Megabus with my best friend and $600 to my name. In May, that same friend will drive the U-Haul containing what’s left of my life here back to North Carolina. It’s all very circular. My time here feels complete, even though I will miss my adopted home.

A few months after 9/11, Colson Whitehead wrote that we can never appropriately say goodbye to a city. Your last metro ride to Gallery Place happened without fanfare. At some unknown point, you were closer to your last chicken box from Yum’s than you were to the first. That essay was later adapted and evolved from a requiem into an atlas of the place that made Whitehead who he is. Mine will do both at once.

scenes of home

Before I go, I’ll have to walk past my first house in the city, a shit hole with bugs and rats and roommates I loved anyway. I’ll go by my second solo apartment, where I was sitting when I found out my essay was going to be in The Best American Science and Nature Writing. That same apartment is where my seven-year relationship ended a week before I moved out. I tossed my mattress before I left. I could only think of him when I tried to sleep on it, and keeping it felt too on the nose. I’ll venture to the former HuffPost office on Pennsylvania Avenue, the building where I started my career, before I run my old route—down 17th, onto Constitution, all the way to the reflecting pool at the foot of the Washington Monument. On a different day, I’ll get out the door to Stanton Park, sit on the bench where I read for 30 minutes at a time, and then walk the mile back. I’ll sit down at Pluma to order the avocado toast and the oat milk latte with vanilla, the way I used to before the pandemic locked us indoors for a year. I’ll pop into Baker’s Daughter for the bacon, egg, and cheese burrito—two, actually—and Red Derby, which is the best dive bar in this city, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

There are a few rooftops to visit and, of course, one more night at the Bullpen—which will always be famous and I’ll never forget the night I fell at Everyday People before me and my homegirl left to use a clean bathroom and smiled at the security guard to get back in. I have to go one more time to the Blacksonian, because I was here when it opened, and I’ve been more times than I can count.

These are the places. There are more. There are dozens.

Whitehead mentions that our old homes would gossip about us if they got the chance. Mine would have a lot to say. #218 would tell #314 about the year I pretty much stopped answering my mama’s calls and communicated almost exclusively through my dad. The same unit would tell the house I lived in uptown that I became someone who slept through the night and woke up before 1 P.M. My current place would join and share how I wailed like an injured child when my dad died, then again 10 months later when it was my uncle.

This is the city where I quit smoking. Where I started lifting, which has given me a kind of peace I didn’t know my body was capable of. Where I grew from a reporter into a writer and an editor. Where I met almost every person I now consider close. Where I cried watching Beyoncé sing Dangerously in Love. Where I got pushed into the stage barriers at Echostage during a Gucci Mane concert because of all the fights in the crowd, but I also got to see Playboi Carti and Dreezy before they blew up. Where I went apple picking with the homies and down to the cherry blossoms every spring, and into every museum. Northeast holds the most of me. I have lived there for the bulk of my 11 years, and it remains my favorite side of the city.

sweet journalist baby 🥹

I won’t be here for the kickoff of Jazz in the Garden, but as I walk barefoot through my friend’s yard, I’ll think of every summer Friday I spent in the Sculpture Garden, lying out on a blanket or dipping my feet in the fountain while drinking sangria. On my last night here, I’ll pour one off the balcony for everything politics, gentrification, the pandemic, or some combination has taken from this beautiful city. Sweet Mango Café, where I had my first authentic beef patty and ate it sitting next to Laz Alonso. Marvin, where my first year in D.C. I got drunk and fell asleep at the bar. Tropicalia, where I’d wind my hips on reggae night. Dodge City, where I threw ass until my knees ached and my thighs hurt. The Kennedy Center, where I saw Kendrick Lamar perform his one-night-only show of To Pimp A Butterfly with The National Symphony. American Son, where I ate the best burger I’ve ever had. Stadium, where my friend introduced me to thee best wings, omfg.

There is no place in this city that I won’t miss—except every single Target and CVS.

D.C. has been the only continuous witness to 11 years of a life that has turned over at least three times—probably more. Friends and lovers and employers have come and gone. The man I thought I’d marry left me for another woman. I changed what I eat, what I read, who I answer the phone for, and what I tolerate from people in my life. Despite it all, D.C. has been here. It’s seen me grow from a wide-eyed 22-year-old to a discerning 33-year-old woman who has done things the girl who moved here never dreamed of. That’s what a city, a home is, in the end—the archive of the parts we’ve shed, stored on our behalf by streets that don’t ask anything of us.

And still, I have missed the South. I am ready to hear the cicadas chirping on balmy summer evenings, to feel the thick cushion of tall fescue under my feet, to mush my toes into the ochre colored earth. Maybe this transition is the South’s way of saying it has missed me, too.

At an actual homegoing, this is when the pastor says the deceased has completed their journey. They’d assure you that this is not a sad occasion, but a joyous one, even if we feel grief, because the person, the thing we loved, is now eternal, immortalized. The congregation would nod, a weepy “yes, pastor” would escape a few mouths.

I will say I love you, and I’m going to miss you. And then I will go back South.

---

Everything you just read is free, and I want it to stay that way! But the work behind Healthy Futures isn’t. If this issue earned your trust, a tip or a paid subscription helps me keep earning it.