This one is about 'feelings' so you are warned in advance! Specifically about home and homesickness. I wrote this a while back and while I am right now in Vietnam, it still holds true!
There is nothing new or unique about the loss and longing associated with leaving home. It has existed since forever and has been captured in beautiful words and images by authors and artists alike. Some of my favorite books are those about the experiences of those who left or were immigrants (one that just popped into my head was The Prayer Room). If you are reading this, you perhaps already know that I left (a suburb of) Delhi to move to Minneapolis to study last year. It wasn't the first time I was traveling, it wasn't the first time I was going to the States but it was the first time I was going to live away from home and in the Midwest. I think I was as prepared as I could be but it was still a hard, tough first semester in so many ways. I have spent the months after thinking about it, wondering what I could have done to make it better for myself and can I make it better for someone else. I have tried to decode how much of my experience was because of who I am, in terms of character traits, being an international student, being brown (:)) and my gender and how much of it just a rite of passage that any move will always involve. It interests me tremendously and is one of my favorite topics to talk (ad nauseam).
I remember mistakenly not imagining how much I would miss Hindi. I forgot how blended it was into the daily fabric of my life. I remember the first time I had a long conversation with someone at school in Hindi and how I thought about that moment being one when some sort of floodgates opened. I don't think I will ever again underestimate the power of using a language and the meaning and satisfaction it can bring.
I keep joking that I feel like a fraud Indian, because there are some quintessential Indian things that I don't know how to do: like cook good Indian food (well cook really), Bollywood or classical dance, or yoga. I say this tritely but I do have the question of what makes me Indian running in my head a lot. The things that I miss are sometimes so weird and yet powerful, it staggers me.
I miss ceiling fans. I miss being almost force-fed. I miss laying on the cool floor at my home. I miss sitting on the kitchen counter-top and eating as my mother cooked. I miss driving. I miss the fragrance of jasmine flowers. I miss a cool drink on a hot summer day. I miss waking up from a nap and knowing where I was. I miss my occasional evening walks. I miss the people I grew up with, the people I shared cabs with, the places I traveled to, the students I worked with. I miss my work. I miss so many things and the only way I can think of expressing it is best done through the word kairoscelerosis from the website The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
I do feel like I will never quite be home again. I met with people who I work with in a student group at the university and who I also count as friends and we were talking about studying in a country other than your own, age and moving. One of the things we were talking about is how there is probably something different about people who leave their countries, perhaps some sort of self-selection, something that propels them. It seems like those who leave, whether for short or long periods of time, would have left in some way or the other. As I re-read this, I realize how rambling this sounds and perhaps on another day I will be able to articulate this better. But I do know that there is no returning because you can never return to the same point in life and that perhaps is the beauty and sadness of it all. There is no pausing, there is no repeating and there is no reset button. Life is relentless.
I remember thinking to myself how it wasn't the big things that broke me, like the food-splattered walls of the house I moved into alone, sitting outside the school for two hours when I didn't have anyplace else to go, blah blah. It was the little things; I am told it is often the little things. But I have also learned that there is a moment, and I use the word moment loosely to refer to a chunk of time, when things shift, when something changes. It is like when you start seeing where the pieces of the puzzle go. The puzzle isn't complete, you are far from that, but you start seeing where the pieces fit, where you fit. I believe in that moment and I guess that is what helps, especially when you know that even if you have a physical home you don't belong only to one place anymore. This was my letter to leaving and arriving, to never belonging to a single place anymore.
There is nothing new or unique about the loss and longing associated with leaving home. It has existed since forever and has been captured in beautiful words and images by authors and artists alike. Some of my favorite books are those about the experiences of those who left or were immigrants (one that just popped into my head was The Prayer Room). If you are reading this, you perhaps already know that I left (a suburb of) Delhi to move to Minneapolis to study last year. It wasn't the first time I was traveling, it wasn't the first time I was going to the States but it was the first time I was going to live away from home and in the Midwest. I think I was as prepared as I could be but it was still a hard, tough first semester in so many ways. I have spent the months after thinking about it, wondering what I could have done to make it better for myself and can I make it better for someone else. I have tried to decode how much of my experience was because of who I am, in terms of character traits, being an international student, being brown (:)) and my gender and how much of it just a rite of passage that any move will always involve. It interests me tremendously and is one of my favorite topics to talk (ad nauseam).
I remember mistakenly not imagining how much I would miss Hindi. I forgot how blended it was into the daily fabric of my life. I remember the first time I had a long conversation with someone at school in Hindi and how I thought about that moment being one when some sort of floodgates opened. I don't think I will ever again underestimate the power of using a language and the meaning and satisfaction it can bring.
I keep joking that I feel like a fraud Indian, because there are some quintessential Indian things that I don't know how to do: like cook good Indian food (well cook really), Bollywood or classical dance, or yoga. I say this tritely but I do have the question of what makes me Indian running in my head a lot. The things that I miss are sometimes so weird and yet powerful, it staggers me.
I miss ceiling fans. I miss being almost force-fed. I miss laying on the cool floor at my home. I miss sitting on the kitchen counter-top and eating as my mother cooked. I miss driving. I miss the fragrance of jasmine flowers. I miss a cool drink on a hot summer day. I miss waking up from a nap and knowing where I was. I miss my occasional evening walks. I miss the people I grew up with, the people I shared cabs with, the places I traveled to, the students I worked with. I miss my work. I miss so many things and the only way I can think of expressing it is best done through the word kairoscelerosis from the website The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
I do feel like I will never quite be home again. I met with people who I work with in a student group at the university and who I also count as friends and we were talking about studying in a country other than your own, age and moving. One of the things we were talking about is how there is probably something different about people who leave their countries, perhaps some sort of self-selection, something that propels them. It seems like those who leave, whether for short or long periods of time, would have left in some way or the other. As I re-read this, I realize how rambling this sounds and perhaps on another day I will be able to articulate this better. But I do know that there is no returning because you can never return to the same point in life and that perhaps is the beauty and sadness of it all. There is no pausing, there is no repeating and there is no reset button. Life is relentless.
I remember thinking to myself how it wasn't the big things that broke me, like the food-splattered walls of the house I moved into alone, sitting outside the school for two hours when I didn't have anyplace else to go, blah blah. It was the little things; I am told it is often the little things. But I have also learned that there is a moment, and I use the word moment loosely to refer to a chunk of time, when things shift, when something changes. It is like when you start seeing where the pieces of the puzzle go. The puzzle isn't complete, you are far from that, but you start seeing where the pieces fit, where you fit. I believe in that moment and I guess that is what helps, especially when you know that even if you have a physical home you don't belong only to one place anymore. This was my letter to leaving and arriving, to never belonging to a single place anymore.
2 comments:
Just a thought. For a long time, a loooooooong time, being in the US meant not being home in Colombia. Without noticing, that changed. I am not sure when, but probably year nine in MN. Now that I have been in MN for 22 years I feel home in MN AND in Colombia. Although I must admit that going back to Bogota and fitting in and adjusting to the place is much easier than returning to MN. GFS
It is strange, especially with being in Vietnam over the summer, which is more similar to being home (India) than the States. But at this moment I feel very far away from both homes. Thank you for sharing that with me. It feels like it depends on so many things, including time.
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