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. She said that seem to be happy about moving back home. Yes, the opportunities back home are endless. Yet, I'm going back to reality. I’m leaving a lot behind. A part of me feels like a failure. Another part of me feels relieved. There is a certain freedom in this so-called failure of mine. My heart is weary. My mind is inflamed with anxieties. Someone said that I live an interesting life. But I’ve 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. 

I have nothing to prove, anymore. 

My life as an expat? It’s hard — assimilating is difficult. Your culture is so 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 isolated. I’ve never known loneliness like I knew it in that country. I’m surrounded by people. Yet, they all feel so temporary. In my heart of hearts, I know that these people will forget me — out of sight, out of mind.

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 there has been extraordinary.

What exhausts me is 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. 

What I fear the most is, of course, coming across him again — the one who started all of this. I realise, now, that a surgery to remove the physical scar he left on my body was not enough. I’m not sure how my body will react when we cross paths. 

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.