Detachment

“My experiences and struggles with home are not necessarily the same ones as Reyna Grande’s. My struggle with home is about feeling disconnected, or detached, from community. I have watched as my previous homes skyrocket in rent rates and property values. In many cases, to a point where folks who once called that place their home, and contributed to the makeup of that community, can no longer afford to stay there. High-end restaurants and shopping fill the downtowns, catering to anyone new, while nearly ignoring what remains of the previous community. It feels like the character of what was once home disappears, and it is replaced with what may as well be dollhouses, emulating a community but missing something not quite as tangible. It can feel like a wedge that is driving division between between the people who call a place home, and the place itself, along with the sense of community; one of the things which makes a home a home. On one side of the fracture, a new and unfamiliar image of the very place you call home. On the other side, isolation and disconnection.”