Homebound?

A while ago, I wrote about feeling like a foreigner in the country I live in.

The following quote by Jhumpa Lahiri probably best illustrated how I felt about the whole thing.

"For being a foreigner Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been an ordinary life, only to discover that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity of from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect."

It's funny how a few years and meaningful friends and family can turn situations on their heads. It's time again for me to head back to the United States - the beacon of home, opportunity and possibilities - and all I can think of is how much I am going to miss India and how intrinsic it has become my sense of identity and home. When I moved here 8 years ago I wanted nothing but to finish school and go back 'home' as quickly as possible, but doing that now seems so difficult. I'm suddenly lost as to what I'm returning to. The whys of going back are clear, but the how's are a blur.

It's both unsettling and exhilarating to stand at home in a place that once felt foreign and look back at the shores of a former home and see a foreign land.

If I can take anything from this particular flip of circumstances, it's probably just that as long as I have the people in my life that make me feel at home, I am exactly where I need to be.

Bring it on, US of A!