this has now come up in both courses i am taking as a student this semester: i have no emotional attachment to places.

in my creative nonfiction workshop, we were asked to do an exercise where we wrote about a place. i couldn’t think of a single physical place that i had anything to say about, so i chose a virtual space (an online message board) to discuss. we were also assigned two essays about New York to read and then discuss, and, as well-written as they were, i was intensely bored by them. in attempting to explain my lack of interest to the rest of the group (since it seems odd to be so uninterested in something that’s so meaningful to most people), i referenced a couple examples:

1. my partner has commented a few times about how it’s weird that i don’t miss our hometown. she talks about specific places that have significance to her, and she’s somewhat mystified that i can’t name any places that are similarly meaningful to me, considering that i spent my whole life there up until 2012. and i really can’t. i miss the weather, but that’s it. (i’m also embarrassed about how little i miss my family, but that’s a whole other thing. i actually feel less self-conscious about that, like it’s more understandable and/or acceptable.)
2. a couple summers ago, i spent a couple months in Shanghai, and i made a couple friends. i was talking to one of them, and she was saying i should come and visit, and i said that would be great and i’d love to come see her (i meant it). she replied no, it would be a waste to come to Shanghai again, and that if i really did come back to China there’s so much stuff i can see and other places i should go. i was kind of baffled by this, which baffled her; i was like, why would i do that? if i come all the way to China, i’m coming to see my friend, not some old crap and places i don’t care about. when i was in Shanghai, i didn’t go anywhere or do anything– i just wanted to hang around with people who i liked, even if i never had the opportunity to come back. i’m quite sure i missed lots of cool stuff, but i also don’t regret it, because i don’t care.

now i’ve been asked to write about a ‘pilgrimage’ for my prose forms class, which is just…i have no clue how i might do that. there are some places i would like to go (Tokyo or Mexico City to see wrestling shows there), but the idea of a ‘pilgrimage’ doesn’t fit, because it’s not the place, it’s more the event. if i could go to another place and have a similar experience, then i would be fine with that. really, the only places i want to go are places where someone i care about lives (Los Angeles, Norman (OK), Dyer (IN), etc.), and it’s about them, not the place, because if they move away then i would lose interest in those places.

i know that this is not common, and i worry that it’s evidence of some kind of unspeakable coldness. my workshop instructor said that my attitude reflects ‘an extreme lack of sentimentality,’ which i am both intensely ashamed of and perversely proud of. it feels bad, because it does seem like a strong symptom of my alienation from others and how they experience the world (sometimes i do wonder if i would be on the autism spectrum, just because i am often so bewildered by ‘regular’ peoples’ emotions), but i also always kind of feel proud that i can stand outside these feelings, just because they seem so bizarre and unhelpful to me. the instructor was insistent that it’s an asset (at least insofar as it helps my writing, i guess), but that’s easy to say when you’re not the one who’s alienated all the time, always trapped inside your own head, on a never-ending journey to find a way out, into the larger world.

ellipses~