Every summer break, I break down and form again- summer after summer, winter after winter. It’s like the Phoenix burning up in flames and being reborn from those flames or so I would like to believe because, in the flames of the Phoenix, there is a golden warmth- a silver lining to the pain, making it all worthwhile. This pain eventually leads to the rebirth of the Phoenix, which is always beautiful- hopeful and fierce in its thousand possibilities. This seasonal process, however painful, traced my journey from myself to myself- losing and finding and losing again.
Homecoming was more than coming back to a place. It was coming back to myself. Looking at it all from a stranger’s perspective and becoming familiar with it all over again only to lose it to oblivion in a few weeks time. Homecoming was self-discovery- realizing how far I have come from the seventeen-year-old child I left behind and realizing how the seventeen-year-old was still there with me.
I left home at seventeen for a boarding school. Ever since then home became an illusory concept. Sleeping in a different bed every year, eating at a different table every day- I forgot what home meant. Familiarity became an alien concept. In my desperate attempt to hold on to it, I began holding onto not only people I was familiar with but places too. I had a spot in the library, the dining hall, even had a cubicle picked in the toilet. I was finding fragments of a home in places- the home that wasn’t there anymore.
While I was adrift in my search for home, the house I left behind began to call me in mysterious ways. Each summer and winter I would pack my bags with urgency, tripping over suitcases, struggling with suitcase straps. I would run to my seat on the bus home and crane my neck to see the first distant glimpse of home from the backseat of my car. It was beautiful- the concept of homecoming- in its wisp of familiarity and glow of warmth. However, it was never more than that- a wisp, a concept eluding me day after day. I had a place to call home but none to be at home.
With the promise of familiarity came the baggage of reflection. Homecoming brought me face to face with a bright-eyed seventeen-year-old self-full of ambitions and most of all, Hope. She had a twinkle of trust in her eyes, and whenever I looked in those eyes, I knew I betrayed that trust, that I never became what this seventeen-year-old girl hoped for me. I look away from her questioning gaze. Living in the same room with her gaze and the perpetual silence was excruciating. It was a constant reminder of what I could not be. Crumbling down, it engulfed me.
At times, I woke up in the middle of the night breathless. In this breathlessness, she came and sat by me and slipped her hand into mine. In her silence was assurance. Her eyes told me that this fall when I go away from home, I would be something magnificent. She gave me hope to carry on, to fight for what I wanted. Holding my hand, she lulled me back to sleep with dreams of strength to be what she envisioned for me, to not let the seventeen-year-old darling down. She was my worst fear and my only hope.
Leaving a place not only took a home away from me, but it also took myself away too. Coming back to the dusty bookshelves and hidden notes in pillowcases was hard. It needed the courage to face myself. The biggest fear was to let myself down that crushed me.
So this winter, I came prepared. On my way to home, I made a list of all I had accomplished from my last visit and one about what I will do from the time I leave till I come back next- small things like learning to cut my nails and big stuff like what Marx was all about. I held these two lists in front of my seventeen-year-old self and for once, she came and hugged me. She came up to my ear and whispered, “One day you will be there.”
And then I was home.
