i'm home...?
There's still a solid week or so left of the holiday break for me, but I'm itching to go back to the city. Have been for the past...I don't know how long, actually. This isn't a new feeling, but it's the first time I've ever felt the definition of "home" start to shift.
I suppose it's a student thing, and a natural consequence of living away from your family for a big chunk of your life. I'm so used to being alone all day in my little apartment. I'm glad to be with my family, but at the same time, part of me wants to go back. I can't help itāmost of my life is there. Everything important, except the most important.
I need to get to work, too. The second semester is approaching, which means I need to start planning for it. But the fact that I'm still home is messing with my head. I just can't switch on my brain's work mode. (I also can't seem to wake up at normal hours. Maybe I need to change my alarm music.)
I can't remember if I've ever quoted her on this blog before, but Arlene J. Chai perfectly verbalizes how I feel about my hometown and the city in her book The Last Time I Saw Mother:
...No matter which home I am going home to, I am always leaving another one behindā¦Migrants, I think, are people who are never whole, never completely in one place. Ours is a fractured existence.
I'm not a migrant like the book's main character, but it really does sum up the experience of always flitting in between two places you could call home. Yesterday I even had to cancel and redo a makeup order for my mom because I'd put my city address down, not my hometown address. When will I get used to being never completely in one place?