Scene 23: The Replacement Theory

Human beings are built to adapt.

Wherever you go, after a while you begin to adjust. To the climate, the customs, the language, whatever.

I've always known this, and I've experienced it multiple times. Going to a different school, going to another country. But I always assumed that adaptation was a system that added things to your life- put new things in with the schema of what you already knew.

But what I've learned here in London is that adaptation usually doesn't mean addition- it means replacement.

When you find a restaurant in your new home (for me, London) that is your favorite restaurant out of the others you've tried, it's not your favorite 'London' restaurant. It's just your favorite restaurant.

The places you find that make up your 'new' life aren't new after you've adapted. They're just life.

I have a place I go to get coffee, a place I go to get groceries, to get my hair cut, to buy books. Being here for so long, they've simply become what life looks like to me.

I believe that's why you 'can't go home again.' When you return, you say, "Oh, that's where I used to love eating Chinese food," or, "That's where I used to get vintage cds," because 'home' is no longer your present. It's not until you adapt again that the things you considered your 'favorites' before you left home are your favorites again.

Obviously, relationships are different. No one replaces your family, or your boyfriend, or your best friend. But everyone has those 'high school friends.' That person you 'used to be close to.'

I'm excited to go home in two weeks, but it will be different than I thought it would be.

I'll see Starbucks, and I won't think, "Yay! I can have my latte again!"

I'll think, "Oh, that's where I got lattes before. I'll go there."

I'll see the movie theater I frequented and think, "I guess I'll see a movie at this theater, then."

And the same with everything else. I'll be adapting to my home, which is a strange concept to wrap your head around.

I guess it's preparation for graduation next year, when I'll truly leave and go off into the great unknown and fully implant myself somewhere different.

Then I'll come home for a holiday or quick trip and sit in what I'll then consider my 'old' bedroom, and look at my 'old' pictures, and pick up my 'old' teddy bear, and think, "I used to live here."

I think about America now and that's what pops into my head.

"I used to live there."


-B