I don’t feel 'home'.
The not so often talked about part of moving abroad at a young age is that you will never feel home again. The first couple of years, you are still exploring and excited to be out there, making friends and seeing places. You’re naive and innocent. You trust everyone and see the best in people. But sooner or later, that feeling of thrill fades. You simply get used to being a foreigner. You visit home once or twice a year, but you won’t feel at home. Everything is the same in a relative way, but you’ve aged in ways that are hard to explain. You feel it in every conversation you have. Would you stay if you knew this would happen? Probably not. Because at the end of the day, you chose this to create a better life for yourself and the people you love. Soon you lose the idea of what a better life even means for you. It is certainly not the unease of never belonging. But you will keep going so that you can provide that promised better life for others. It comes at a cost of losing what could’ve been a better life for you. The loss of moments in the hopes of giving back.
Moments of washing the dishes in the kitchen with your siblings. Experimenting with a new recipe with your mom. Discussing worldly affairs with your uncles around the big family table. Listening to your father’s stories from when he was in the army as he grilled kebabs. You would give a lot just to have back one of those plain afternoons when you didn’t know what to do and ended up wandering around the house for hours. Early spring, when the apricot trees would bloom and fill the whole backyard with their scent. Watching С лёгким паром ever new year’s, over and over again, and every time find the capacity to criticize Женяʻs character. Sitting around the messy table to debrief over freshly brewed green tea once the guests leave. Eating оливье and Шуба for days after the 31st, every time putting all your faith into not getting food poisoning.
You desperately search for this sense of home in everyone you meet. You trust, and try to see the best in them, with the innocence of a child. Because this is what we used to do at home, no? But you soon realize that it is not how life works. You grow more and more skeptical, a version of yourself you donʻt quite recognize. You desperately try to hold on to who you were once. I often yearn for that older, innocent self whose entire goal for the day would be to carve sculptures from yesterday’s snow or to somehow successfully ration the bus money to feed the dog I’d pass every day on my way home form school.
It is a sacrifice that will last a century. If you were to ask me what my favorite sound is, it would probably be the engine sound of VAZ-2017. Because it would mean dad is home. The only sound that could make me run. And how much I would give to hear it now.
And yet, the beautiful thing about being human is that no feeling is final. There is always a glimpse of hope that maybe one day you will feel home again. Maybe not in the same way, but it will feel okay. That there will surely be someone or someplace that will make it alright.
@feruza_dev
