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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Of Home and Here

"People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Photo Credit goes to bwilkson

It's now February 1st. I have 28 days left till my return to Malaysia for uni.

I don't want to go back there, nor do I want to stay here. "Here" is a home that feels more like a familiar truck stop. You grab a couple of bites and talk to faces that you have grown to know. But no matter how much those people there say you belong with them, you just want to be on your way.

You know in your heart that “Here” is not home.

I like to think that Houston is my home despite having only lived there for 3 years. This might seem like a hilarious notion to most people, since I'm not even American. But my “home” most certainly isn't in Thailand or Malaysia. Despite having been back in Thailand for years now, being here still gives me a constant stream of culture shocks. It's often the little things like people not knowing what football (By which I mean “American football” for you Commonwealth folks out there) is and the existence of people who never have even heard of insightful novels like The Handmaid's Tale, Mansfield Park, We, The Count of Monte Cristo, Specimen Days, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

These things may seem insignificant and I might seem like I'm nitpicking, but I say that it's the little things that will kill you in the end.

I have a lot of friends who could relate to that, since they are either 1st or 2nd generation of Missionary Kids (International schools are great like that). When I ask them “Do you ever want to go back to [your passport country]”, most would say no. But like myself, most of them would eventually have to go back. The reasons often vary, from family situations to the pursuance of a higher education to their parents fearing that their children have lost their sense of nationalism (Admittedly, most Americans MK's seems to have no problem with this one).

So I'm “home” but I continue to be lost. Houston is a home that is not a home, that was a home that I can never go back to ever again.
Sometimes I think God hates me.


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