Of course I'm happy to be home. Excited to see friends and family, and glad to find comfort in the familiar. But this time I also feel sad, that in some perhaps distinctly limited---but very concrete---sense this will soon no longer be home. Upset, angry even, because I feel like my home is being taken away from me---but really there is no reasonable or good target for this anger. Part of me is defiant---it doesn't matter, this will always be home; or: what does it matter? The world is my oyster---; part of me is already grieving over what it sees, rather overdramatically, as imminent exile.
Last evening I thought about the upcoming flight home and the words that would greet me as I passed through the immigration gantries at the end of that long journey. Never have those words felt so deeply charged, or provoked such conflicted ambivalence. I really felt like---still feel like---screaming and bawling and crying. It's not terribly reasonable, and when I've had time to calm down and actually reflect on it for a while it feels rather like making a mountain out of a molehill. Then again, all that reasoned reflection doesn't make---hasn't made---this profound sense of loss go away.
Maybe I should just come to terms with that. That, no matter how I spin it, my identity---the narrative I have built of myself, of who I am and where I belong---will be---has been---fundamentally shaken. That I should not---cannot---simply pretend that things will carry on as before. That perhaps that identity wasn't nearly as solid or sturdy as I thought it was, and that I should rebuild a stronger one where the old one collapses.
Last evening I thought about the upcoming flight home and the words that would greet me as I passed through the immigration gantries at the end of that long journey. Never have those words felt so deeply charged, or provoked such conflicted ambivalence. I really felt like---still feel like---screaming and bawling and crying. It's not terribly reasonable, and when I've had time to calm down and actually reflect on it for a while it feels rather like making a mountain out of a molehill. Then again, all that reasoned reflection doesn't make---hasn't made---this profound sense of loss go away.
Maybe I should just come to terms with that. That, no matter how I spin it, my identity---the narrative I have built of myself, of who I am and where I belong---will be---has been---fundamentally shaken. That I should not---cannot---simply pretend that things will carry on as before. That perhaps that identity wasn't nearly as solid or sturdy as I thought it was, and that I should rebuild a stronger one where the old one collapses.
