"When are you coming home?" became a text message I grew accustomed to receiving as I tried to balance the different lives I was leading.
Living more out of a suitcase than anything, a feeling of familiarity would pass through me each time I boarded a plane and headed towards a destination that would take me to another group of friends, another environment, another place I could call home.
It's a difficult feeling to describe, and an even harder feeling to understand, leaving the life you knew during the week just to enter into a new one as soon as you reached 30,000 feet. In a sense, you begin to learn the truest version of yourself, one comprised of every memory, every personality you exude in every different location. In short, you begin to know yourself as a whole, while only giving parts of yourself to each environment you become an integral part of. I came to understand that my home was one that lacked permanency, or even tangibility, as the home I built was laid brick by brick inside of myself, its foundations based in various sets of memories given to me by those who I consider closest, but happen to be hundreds of miles apart from one another.
To play devil's advocate, this life of constant movement, of constant travel, was one filled with speed bumps and forced self discovery─ a life I came to view as a blessing and a curse. Home seemed to be just out of my grasp, as I spent weekdays in one state, weekends in another, and summers in foreign lands; all of which contained different sets of friends, different sets of experiences, and perhaps especially, different versions of myself. The bonds I formed with each individual person, became a friendship with limitations, due to the short period of time allotted to each place and person. In this, I was allowed mere glimpses into the lives I would inevitably never fully be a part of; I experienced relationships as a bystander rather than a participator, missing key moments in the lives of those who would later recount them to me.
As I got older, I came to see this as a glass-half-full type of life. While I had never been so submerged into a life as to grow a deep-rooted attachment to any location, I learned to appreciate the humanity and differences in the practices of each unique person and culture I was exposed to. It allowed for me to find a bottomless appreciation for every place that gave me unforgettable moments, as well as a sense of freedom in the idea of never being tied to the confinement of one life or one past. My identity, or lack of a definitive one, was ultimately formed by the various people I got to know. By lacking a childhood defined solely by the protective bubble developed by one particular area's beliefs and surroundings, I was given the opportunity to form my beliefs, my morals, and myself with the different pieces of worlds I experienced; allowing for me to be comfortable with the unknown, and furthermore, allowing for me to develop an openness, even a craving, for new perspectives and new ways of life.
In other words, I developed a profound appreciation and love for existing within a contradicting binary, belonging everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
If I'm being completely honest, I had accepted the long standing idea in my mind that the only home I would ever know was within myself; I never expected to find a place, a group, a community, in which I was not only wholeheartedly every version of myself, but more. I never expected to grow so profoundly attached to a location and the people within it as to get a feeling I can only describe as homesickness when I am gone for periods lasting longer than a few days.
Yet, here I am, coming to find that the home I built inside of myself moved its foundations, latching on to the first place I took residence with a sense of permanency, allowing me to find not only a place, but a community, that I can confidently call home.
Thank you, USC.
