To Home

To home,

I sometimes feel like I never know who or where you are. What do you feel like? I know you lie where the ocean meets land. I have felt you before, that sweet need to belong. All of my “homes” began and ended with the ocean. With warm temperate climates and palm trees growing from the ground, making the sweetest fruit. But “Where are you from?” is now one of the most complicated questions someone can ask me. I think about my answer, sometimes lying, the real answer is so complicated and stressful to me. So I lie, to not explain myself, so as to not have to explain the roots of where I came from, where my bloodline started. Why my nationality does not match my place of birth. “Where are you from?”

My first home is where the hot sun beats down on my body. I am glad to have had the privilege to call you home for so many years of my life. To have my first breathe in a wonderful country full of rich culture and strong traditions. I’m glad for the delicious food and incomparable memories. From the birthdays to the weddings. You will always be my first, but I still feel distant from you, something isn’t right. I don’t feel bonded even though you were everything I knew for 18 years of my life. It never seemed like you were truly mine, even though my roots bonded me to you. Now I can’t come and go as I please. And that’s okay because you doesn’t feel familiar anymore. Maybe I think that you have changed, the lifestyle less inviting. But nothings different. I’ve changed.

I hope you aren’t mad at me, because I moved away. To a home that is much different than you are. She’s definitely rainier, colder and harsher. But she’s given me a different type of opportunity, she’s taught me how to empower myself. She has made me independent and grown. I start to call her my temporary home but I know not to get too comfortable. I will have to leave in a few years when this journey ends. Then what? Where is my new home?

You might become a stranger to me, but I know that I will find you again one day. You won’t just be a feeling, you will be a place. Hopefully a place where my toes can touch the sand again, where I can breathe a sigh of relief that finally I’ve stopped moving. I know wherever I chose to be, I will make it a part of my home. I will make a difference in my community and bridge inequalities when I see them. I don’t have to have a word to define what I imagine my home to feel like.

But maybe I’ll never know you again and that excites me too. I can leave a footprint on many different shores, swim in many oceans. Then maybe I won’t long to belong to just one place, family spread around the world across oceans. And perhaps then I’ll feel a sense of belonging again.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon,

Clarisse

“Hiraeth: (n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.”