I associate [place where I grew up] with having no control over my own life.
Because I spent my whole childhood there, with the perpetual confusion and
not understand the world that comes with childhood. Then I spent my
adolescence and the first couple years of my adulthood there, with all the
constraints of strict parents and being the suburbs without being able to
drive and having to coordinate my use of the internet and telephone and
television and bathroom and piano and kitchen with three other people. So I
have all kinds of negative associations with that place; just the look and
the smell make me feel out of control.

I think the trick is to think of myself as a houseguest in some strange
place. I don't live there, I'm just visiting. Then I can come back home
and be in total control of my life.