I'm here, but where am I?
I type, friends, sitting in the kitchen of my own wee flat. It's very quiet as Boy is not back yet with the dogs. While I am pleased to be in my own wee kingdom-flat, the strangeness of the environment is accute. The countryside seen as I came up on the train, of gridded pastures dotted with sheep and hills, seemed confusing rather than charming after my last week in North Carolina. My head is burling and I'm glad I'm alone cos I don't like to see people when I'm like this.
Thing is, I don't know if North Carolina could really ever be my home again despite missing living in the US. I've made a life here in Edinburgh, but it is certainly not my home. I will always be a foreigner. Part of me thinks that if I find a place or a city like Edinburgh but in the US then maybe I'd move back. However, this is a rather simplistic thought.
Thing is, I don't know if North Carolina could really ever be my home again despite missing living in the US. I've made a life here in Edinburgh, but it is certainly not my home. I will always be a foreigner. Part of me thinks that if I find a place or a city like Edinburgh but in the US then maybe I'd move back. However, this is a rather simplistic thought.
posted by Autumn at 6.4.08
2 Comments:
okay, a small ramble:
i guess it's like Okinawa was for first my parents, then for us: we made a home there, we will always love it, but we never stopped being gaijins. there is nothing for me there now but the word "home" will always be attached to it, more than anywhere else.
i've lived in L.A. long enough now to consider California A Home Of Sorts, but sometimes i suspect it has more to do with being where the husband is rather than an actual locale. he gets that cultural vertigo too whenever we go back & forth between the U.S. and Germany.
don't feel guilty or weird for feeling semi-foreign in N.C.; it's changed as much if not more than you have. at least in Edinburgh you can claim "Foreigner!!!" with confidence; it's not so easy when you feel like that in a previously familiar place.
I know how you feel. I have yet to live in a place that I could call home. I could not call a anyplace home since I know I will be leaving it in 2, 3, or 5 years. I remember when it happened too. I was nine and we left Virginia. I was heart broken, and I have not let myself bond to a place since then. All my life I've just been passing through. Maybe at this point I can't put down roots. Maybe I'll be like Aunt Eva, always moving houses never settling in to a place. How sad.
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