The Emotional Complexities of Returning Home
Sitting on the porch of my $140 a month bungalow (suck it, NYC rent), I passed the evening (and a bottle of whisky) waiting out yet another island-wide blackout. Bodies were strewn under the awning, us all hiding from the unrelenting onslaught of monsoon rains. I thought about this random assortment of people from all corners of the globe: the easy, tranquil lassitude of our friendships when truly nothing more than our decision to live on this seven-square-kilometer patch of sand connects us. Or maybe it’s more than that: the deliberate decisions we’ve each made brought us here. Only through the recognition of one another’s difficulties, the risky leaps of faith, do our heartbeats harmonize.
These days, I barely process the transition when I’m headed to a new place. I turn up, adapt, and that’s that. But I’m never really prepared for the emotional complexities of returning home. Maybe it’s because I attach too much significance to nostalgia; maybe it’s because a part of me never really left and I’m still dealing with that; maybe it’s because I’ve grown so comfortable with the unfamiliar that returning to something I’m supposed to know, hoping to still be a part of it… well, that terrifies me.
During the holidays people speak of home a lot more than usual, despite the fact that many of us haven’t seen it in years. Everyone speaks wistfully and in turns, whisky-soaked confessions of a fantastical life once lived, as if remembering a movie they used to love but now can’t recall in proper detail. Everything is romanticized with a surreal adoration for a place we all decidedly left.
It’s in these moments that we ex-pats hover firmly in the past, that we also begin to, carefully, speak of the future. Who will be here in six months, four, after New Year’s? We all know our time spent together is limited, and somehow we’re okay with that. When you travel as much as we have, you learn that you cannot put limitations on new relationships because of inconveniences like probably-never-going-to-see-each-other-again-in-a-few-months or else you’ll end up very, very lonely.
When someone mentions home, we don’t talk of the nostalgic memory of it, the stories that simultaneously drove us away yet keep us clinging to its spirit, but the irrevocable impossibility of it. There’s no algorithm to determine when you’ve been gone too long — it’s just, you know. I know I could go back to standing in line for overpriced salads, put off filling time sheets until the end of the week, pay exorbitant gym membership fees, date total psychos, live for nights of wine and gossip with my roommates and totally own it all. But it terrifies me to allow myself even the fantasy. I would be picking up right where I left off, and like anything expired, the circulatory system of my former home would totally reject me. Our logic may be able to process the linear movement of time in another place, but the heart certainly cannot.
I am not who I was two years ago, and neither is my home.
It’s a dark moment of reality when it clicks that home is somewhere to be visited, but not necessarily somewhere that will welcome our return. That’s why going back, for any amount of time, is so unsettling. To the people I’m returning to, I exist in a black hole of their memory. It’s as if the Matrix realigns the world to mimic what I remember, and those in it automatically revert back to previous versions of themselves. We connect on the level we did years ago, because I don’t know who they are now. I wish I did but I don’t. I couldn’t.
The “what-if” complex is equally maddening. I’m fortunate enough to have a family that 100% accepts my decisions and lifestyle, at times even encourages me to keep going when I have my own doubts. But it’s impossible not to compare my life to where my parents were at my age, and much less possible to ignore the progress of my peers. Having worked in New York City for a few years in the corporate realm, I see now where my former coworkers are, dotted around all new, fantastic jobs, accelerating their respective careers. It gives me insight into where I could be had I not left. By no means do I regret any regrets of my choices (and the ensuing adventures that will follow as a result), and from my vantage point their successes are inspiring, and selfishly, it’s comforting to see a variation of what my future could have been. Once home, however, it’s easy to feel… just, left behind. While everyone oozes out envy about my life, my escapades, my total avant-garde lifestyle, it’s impossible to miss that underlying trepidation on their faces: aren’t I getting a bit too old to still be chasing the party?
That I am.
Maybe it’s in our nature to want more, to expect more. It’s definitely in our nature to assume everything is all-about-us. But the beautiful part about vacationing home is that the charade of familiarity is exactly that for everyone, a make-believe trip to the past. It’s an impressive thing we do: We can exist, temporarily, as versions of our former selves, allowing small looks into how we’ve evolved to shine while falling back on what connected us in the first place, be that hilarious criticism of our current lives, common interests that haven’t dulled, unabated sarcasm at absolutely everything, or all-you-can-drink brunches.
And therein lies the ultimate what if: what if I like what I see? What if I want to stay? What if — when my psyche is sparking and frayed like a live wire from years of movement and newness and inconsistency — the temptation of normalcy and routine is too overwhelming to ignore?
Going home brings up that insecurity that plagues all ex-pats: did I make the right choice or am I truly fucking up? Because if I’m honest, sometimes I would totally trade killing another cockroach in the middle of the night in my bathroom-with-no-roof for a ticket to the MET, I’d also love to check out that new restaurant you Instagrammed instead of eating dollar rice, again. But sometimes I’ll go on a dive with a few reef sharks and surface in between two magnificent volcanoes and be pretty A-OK with my choices.
Visiting home eggs on the universe’s nasty urge to show us what we’re missing. And for those of us on an unconventional track, the safe promise of Thursday night primetime television with delivery on its way and while your roommate and/or boyfriend curls up nearby sounds absolutely exhilarating sometimes.
Hopefully that peek into what my life could be like is meant to renew my commitment to this path I’ve set out on, whatever that’s shaping up to be. Maybe the anxiety of looking back will turn into an overwhelming appreciation for what I have now. Maybe I’ll have a corporate job and a luxury condominium by May.
Whatever the case, it’s important to remind yourself of who you once were to see the progress you’ve made, without letting that progress define you.
And I’ll tip my $11 Bellini to that.
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