i'm not going back the same

I ran away. 

I moved countries thrice in three years. 

I voluntarily left everything I knew. At the time, it felt right. Home had only meant one thing: the truth of my reality. I ran away from the implications of a failed five year relationship, a dysfunctional family dynamic, and the reality that as an only child the responsibility of my family’s aging falls onto my shoulders. 

My life is just a loop of the same constants.  

I’m on a bus to Bergamo Airport. Soon, I’ll board a plane to a country that never felt like home. And, a year ago, my paranoid premonition had already whispered this to me. Yet, now, this bittersweet feeling overcomes me: this is probably the last time I will need to catch a plane to that country. 

My roommate often catches me sulking around in the dark. "Are you happy about going home?"

 

I’m leaving the fantasy behind. A part of me feels like a failure. Another part of me is relieved. There is a certain freedom in this loss. My heart is weary. My mind is inflamed with anxieties. Someone said that I live an interesting life. But I’ve admittedly spent these last three years running. 

Heartbreak? No problem — book a flight. Career regression? No problem — book a bus. Loneliness? No problem — book a train. 

Assimilating here has been difficult. My culture is rare. Influenced by everyone, yet — part of half a million unique. I did not have my own community to lean on — or a common language to speak in person when I felt ostracised. I’ve never known loneliness like I knew it in that country. I’m surrounded by people. Yet, they all feel so temporary.

I’m tired of keeping my mouth shut; of submitting. Of them trying to make me submit. “Who cares?” is a phrase I’ve heard often when I share something about the island. I’m tired of being left out of conversations because I don’t speak their language — “Oh, only English?” 

I’m tired of being met by an eye-roll. And a cold shoulder. I'm tired of pretending that I didn't notice that the country is soulless — that I'm just another puppet wearing a suit. I'm not much of an actress. But, my performance here has been extraordinary.

Exhausting work this, of being called exotic — not being seen as a person but rather, a conquest. I’m so incredibly tired of pretending to be somebody I’m not. Would I have wasted a year and a half in that country? 

The worst part? 

I feel as though I am unresolved. 

I am not the same girl I was three years ago. Will home accept me as I am? Will home regress me to how I was before? Who I am hated who I was there. I don't recognise myself in that person anymore. I have nothing to prove, anymore. 

Friends had told me that I was meant for bigger things than home. That me moving away was a natural result. I left a little pond to drown in the ocean.

Everyone was wrong about me. Everyone's high hopes for me, unfortunately, were the very ingredients that are contributing to this sinking feeling: did I let everyone down? 

I’m going home soon. And, I'm scared.