as much as going home is my holiday, the fact that it is home after all, for someone who left home for uni and hasn’t really been back much since (not bc I don’t love my family, I miss them terribly but that city is not really for me), feels almost like the end of a holiday. It feels like I’m going back to something I’d been on a long, fever-dreamed, endlessly long holiday from.
I go about my day to day life, charmed by the world around me. I immerse myself in music, in art; people say I have endless energy for all those gigs I go to and have admired my enthusiasm for music, but I sometimes catch glimpses of the gaping-mouthed fool being exposed to something they could never have for years: I’m hungry, I’m making up for lost time, I have to see all those shows that never came by mine before. I’m light-headed from possibility. I’m drunk on the power of accessibility, the way things are in reach, the yeses I hear, the ability to be an insider in places that were always shut out to us, that we were seemingly invisible to. I pace myself but I find myself making up for lost teens: all those ‘world tours’ that would skip an entire continent. All those searches for something local that was happening and was truly ours, not propped up by a film industry, not bowing to the political opinions of a ruling party in fear of being mobbed, something that was by us, about us and for us, uncensored. The joys of community.
I immerse myself in people I would never have talked to before, in all those places I was either afraid to or told not to reach for (safety reasons). I am a child inserting my fingers into a socket. Now, that has happened to me when I was a kid and I got shocked so bad that I had to have electrical tape wrapped on my burned fingers for a bit and had to lie down flat on the floor (earthing) for a few minutes. I am a child plugging my fingers in a feverish dream where nothing goes wrong. Somehow, I have wandered and wandered and I am alive. I don’t always know what’s going on, but somehow, I am on the road. I am on some path. To somewhere.
And now I’m going home. It’s been ages since I’ve been, and I feel like I’ll have my feet grounded again. It feels like a punctuation mark, more of a comma, some sort of pause. It’s not a full stop. I have my whole life ahead of me. I’m sure I’m not alone, I’m sure there’s a whole world of people out there that have similarly mixed feelings about going home. You go to visit, but you can never truly return. Some people get homesick and realise they really do belong where they come from, some others have always known they were meant to leave and never come back. These sentiments are not something you can ever explain to an immigration officer, but they are unspoken truth that so many must feel in their very bodies, in their expression, in the way they carry themselves, their outlooks on life, the way they dress, the way they speak (oh, how much of a world is contained within how much you hide and how much you let on! How much you retain and how much you let go.)
I am who I am because of where I come from. I will always carry that with me, and with pride too. I don’t hide it (unless I’m tired and making a quick, anonymous trip to the grocery store in which case yeah, sometimes I do have a generic grocery store pleasantries accent for when I don’t want to explain my entire background, or give it away in my speech and accent. Yes this applies to taxis too, call it the cab pleasantries accent if you like).
But I am also who I am because I left, because there are certain things I cannot take for granted, because there are things I know are different in different parts of the world. You need both those things to make a whole me, and as much as sometimes I do wish I didn’t have to carry two halves on my back, two disjointed halves that could almost never be glued together, I also know I wouldn’t be me without them both.
And so, going back to the first is an interesting moment to look back, for sure. Do people expect you to have changed? Many people don’t get to see the second half of you, and it surprises them. You feel the need to be cautious about showing too much of your change: not yet, watch out. Don’t betray your roots. They feel strong to point out your bends and turns: I am an unbroken bone. You are healing. You will never be as strong as a bone that has never broken. But we are not bones. They too have these pieces they carry on their back that have been glued together. No one ever has a straight path in life. If there was ever a bone analogy, they have patellas (kneecaps, as I now will remember until the end of my life because of the first search result from having googled the band many times). These bones that join other bones. Covered in muscle and ligaments and stuff. Joints that bend and carry (some) weight and move. To have joints is not to be broken. But who is to explain that to someone who will never see you as theirs again. Neither here, neither there.
Anyway, it’s been an interesting six years, and now I’m going home. Tomorrow’s the last day. I vaguely remember writing a shitty poem on the toilet the night before I got on a plane to leave home the first time, it was probably bad and I don’t remember the contents anymore, but it kept coming back to the line ‘last night on earth’. I can’t remember if for better or worse. This time, I’m writing a shitty emo essay that is going to cause a lot of people mild scrolling annoyance (sorry). Which is still more of an impact than writing in a notebook on the toilet ever had. Guess these are just moments that cause you to sit back and think about what you’ve done for a little bit.
This post wasn’t meant to get this long. This was just meant to be a little observation on the fact that you have the luxury of space at home, and that means I’m probably going to be reading paperback books again. I’ve just bought Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop, Bad Pop for my flight. I’m probably going to luxuriously buy myself a few paperback poetry anthologies. What a life. I’m obviously looking forward to seeing mum and dad and my sister again.
Should the poetry books not fit in my suitcase, I can always leave them at home. Motorcycle Boy*, maybe my sister might even read them. I don’t have to worry about donating them or binning them, or feeling guilty as people look at me exasperatedly while helping me move into my next independent apartment (modest, naturally…): why do you make your own life so hard?? Why did you need to carry so many books when you know you’re going to move?? But those are the small indulgences of going home. Also (and this one’s v specific to my situation) books are so much cheaper at mine. Holy fuck, I’d be out of money instantly if I was spending $24 per book I bought, that is absolutely insane.
*Motorcycle Boy is a song by Fontaines D.C., where singer Grian Chatten is sort of indirectly talking to his little brother who was nowhere near as into literature and poetry as Grian, but after Grian left home, his brother was left to discover it on his own, and Grian sees his brother’s growing connection with literature as almost his way of connecting with his older brother in his absence.