It is the calm before the storm.
I had a gloriously long vacation of six weeks in Singapore. I was going to use the word home but have been reminded most recently that I have for better or ill spent all of my adult life in New England. All one hundred percent of it. So how do you measure what is home?
Perhaps it is because of this that being in Singapore turns me into a child once again. The girl I am over here to all accounts is an independent, confident, capable young woman. I can earn more than enough to live the way I choose to live, keep house, do well in studies, cook and take care of chores and interact with the world. I can also say this because I am here.
The girl I am in the places I grew up though, once again is a child with all her needs being taken care of. I am cooked for, my laundry is done, and a great many things I have only to ask for. More than that though, whatever I can do here suddenly becomes unimportant and secondary. It is not important what I do, only that I am.
It's great for a vacation but now is the time to readjust to being the former girl. The girl who will order her mind and put her best foot forward, be fiercely independent and yet friendly and capable all at once. It is the start of yet another adventure and at the end of it lies a question. One which I hope the answer will become apparent during these two years.
Can my childhood home also become my adult home? If these two girls meet and join, which one will come to the fore? Can I hold on to who I have become?
I'm not sure I will ever find the answer to these questions or ever stop asking them. Growing up, I knew for sure I didn't fit in in cookie-cutter Singapore with its preset molds for people and careers. I am not done growing up but now I know for sure that I will never fit in 100% anywhere and that cookie-cutter molds or not, I don't have to or want to fit in anywhere.
1 comment:
"It is difficult to return to the place you grew up in without becoming the person you were there." --Joe Hill, Heart-Shaped Box
...or something like that. Yes, the irony of the timing struck me as well.
My thought? You need your own space to grow and be your own person, and one's own space comes with a very, very high price tag here -- Singapore being the small little country it is, in more ways than one. It's much easier to just leave and find it somewhere else.
And I doubt you'll ever be fully at home in any one place, having planted roots all over like you have :-p
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