Lowellita continues her journey to find herself this week, after discovering her name defaced on a bathroom stall. Is the writing on the wall for this columnist?

The bar door shut behind me with a weak thud. Not even a thud. It was more like a soft muffle. In reality it was barely audible. It was a similar sound to when you crept into your parents’ home way after curfew, tiptoeing up to your bedroom. A time before cell phones, when parents had no way of knowing whether you were in the next room wrapped up in your twin bed under your Nirvana poster or still running amok in abandoned mill buildings and the deep thicket of what little forest the city spares from condo development.

They would never imagine you were sitting at the crest of Fort Hill looking out at the lights of South Lowell that seemed to flutter as they turned off and on at this hour of the night. It was already way past your time to be home, but it didn’t matter. In the back of your mind, you knew that you would not be able to have this experience ever again — or at least until you were off groundation a month later.

There was no better feeling than that moment, perched on a falling tree, the rotting bark scraping the back of your thighs.

It was always the most interesting crowd that was left mingling early into the morning, grasping red Solo cups, filled with lukewarm foam, in their hands . The ones who didn’t care what their parents thought and the ones whose parents didn’t care about them. The reckless and the abandoned. The ones who would never sell out, never be tied down to a desk, never listen to anyone, never have any regrets, never be stuck — I was one of them, once.

It is strange that I noticed the sound of the door at all, after coming face to face with my alter-ego, rushing from the bathroom stall and uncharacteristically leaving a half-full beer on the bar. I didn’t even hear the band breaking into my favorite guitar riff, the clinking of an empty glass I knocked over hitting the wood floor, or my friend calling after me. It was as if I pressed the mute button in my mind.

Then there I was, trying to catch my breath in the thick summer air only this city’s canals can produce — a smell I have yet to find in any other place I have traveled. Maybe it was the slow flicker of the barroom’s faulty window sign. Or the chirping of the crickets in the minuscule sprigs of grass sprouting up from where the red brick building meets the asphalt. Or the echo of sirens off in the far distance across the bridge somewhere getting quieter and quieter as they drove into the depths of Lowell’s gritty underbelly.

It could have been all of these things combined. Whatever it was, those nights at the peak of the city all came rushing back to me. When I let the door close behind me, I was set to search for the unknown. Ironically, it was the familiarity of this city and its people that has inspired me.

It just hit me there and my stomach started to ache from either the beer, the depression or hunger. I was not going to let any of them get the best of me, so I headed into another familiar place where inspiration flows out of every inch of the place more freely than the grease — the Club Diner.

So far Lowellita’s travels have not taken her too far from her roots. Is there room for her to grow in Lowell? E-mail lowellita@lowellsun.com.