On Home and Home sickness

I'm currently feeling super home-sick. More than a mere longing to be home. It is the realization that this notion of 'home' is not permenant, nor is it stable. It is not where your family is, it is more complex than that. My family is right here with me, it is not the country I miss. KNowing that you have a home is the understanding and belief that no matter how far you roam that 'home' is stable and rooted. IT is the anchor of your being, almost the root of your soul. No matter where you are, it is the magnet that draws you back, that lets you know who you are. You will feel the most extreme feeling of home-sickness when you realize that your home might not exist any longer. Or that this home is no longer a reality. Home-sickness has to do with one's identity. That's why I feel that refugees and exiles suffer the worst kind of home-sickness. The kind of longing but inacessibilty of that notion of 'home' is, in my opinion, what being home-sick is really about.

Feeling at home is also the freedom to act as you wish, not feel obliged to be polite, or work extra hard just to prove that you belong. That is why I feel that migrants will always seek to prove themselves on foreign soil, but will never feel that they are enough merely being themselves. Sometimes, it is that extra look, the secret glance, or that slip of a strange accent that betrays you. The fact that the other party will still try to polite, and try to convince you that you belong. But the fact that it has been awkward. Sometimes, it is more than sensitivity, it is the very existence of this sensitivity that makes it uncomfortable. It is this being sensitive that lets you know this is not your home.

It is also that space you carve out which belongs to you and is strengthend by your memory. You know this place is your home because this is the place you carved out with your friends and family. It is that path you have walked for the past 10 yrs to and from the MRT. It is the people you have met more than once on the same train, adn the smiles of acknowledgement that ensues.
IT is your old secondary school. It is the you you are so familiar with. Wearing ugly shirts and shorts. The places, you have seen them change. The tree outside your window that grew with you, and you watched it. If someone tells you, that from some day onward, this place is no longer going to be yours, and it will no longer be relevant in your future, merely an irrelevant memory of the past. And you are also told that you will have to start anew some place else, somewhere, you know almost nothing of, that was never a part of your memory. That had no place for you, but you have to make a new space from nothing. You will have this strong longing for home. Perhaps, then you will look at your home with a new kind of love and longing. And perhaps even shed a tear or two that nothing is permenant in this world. But then, you move on. And then you will do what needs to be done.