It's a pretty strange situation I think I'm at right about now. Or at least, it was when it first hit me and now it's just normal in its strangeness which makes me wonder if that's a good thing or a bad one?
Anyways.
My mom was asking me the other day in Kuwait if I had an identity crisis and I jokingly told her yes and it was all her fault. But I don't have an identity crisis, really. I pretty much know who I'm dealing with when it comes to me. What I have is a home identity crisis.
In case you weren't aware, I was born in the States and as a wee lass, got shipped over to Kuwait, where I spent my first few years of school, making my first friends, chillin' with the g-parents and uncles and aunts and all that good stuff. Then, six years later, we moved back to the States and have been there, here, for the last 11 years. But because I like to think I was forced here against my will, I never considered the States my home. In the same thought, I can't exactly consider Kuwait my home either, though. It's not the country I know best, or even the language I know best (sadly). But it's where I consider I spent my childhood. That sandy brick house in Salwa is forever my home and I make my mom drive by it every single time we go back.
Even though I was still only eight when we moved here, I think that because I wasn't exactly having the time of my life, I feel like that wasn't my childhood. I kind of, um, hated it here until I was 12. (That's 'cause I hated my school and most of my schoolmates, which, obviously, is what took up the majority of my life.) That's a long time, as a kid, to hate something and not complain about it. Ever. So when I think back to my first childhood, which is pretty much sacred to me, and my second childhood, which sucked ass, I always hold the first in much higher esteem and therefore, those six years are my childhood. And because childhood is my mental home and I'm pretty sure I'm never going to grow up, Kuwait is where I feel most at home. Most of my family lives there, both families have history there, it's where my happiest memories are rooted -- in the time I lived in Kuwait. I even still have school friends there which is so great because it just roots me there even further that I have friends there despite the fact that I left when I was only eight.
So when I moved to California, no matter the connections my parents had, it just wasn't where I wanted to be. To this day, I wish I could have stayed in Kuwait and graduated from ASK, even though I'm pretty pleased with the way the move here shaped me as a person(ality). I still wonder how things would have been if we'd stayed. But last autumn, when I left for university, I shocked myself with how much I missed California. When I got homesick at school, it wasn't just for my family -- it was for the place, my sense of home in California. In eleven years, I never considered here my home, until I left it. Even living and going to school in CA didn't ram the sense of home into me because every summer and some winters, we went back to Kuwait and it wasn't just a visit, it was
going back, visiting home. But last year, when I realised I now had a second home, the home of my adolescence, there came a split.
Two homes, I can deal with. I consider myself blessed and lucky to have two homes in two totally different parts of the world. I love that I come from two worlds and can deal, mostly, with both. That is all fine and dandy.
Moving to university would, I hoped, give me a third home. My home away from home away from home. Unfortunately, that didn't work out as planned and now I'm pretty homesick for that concept of home, the one I would build for myself in these few years at school and reminisce about in years to come. Bullshit. And that, I believe, has disappointed me the most. Coming to uni, in a city and country and continent of my own choice, was my first personal attempt at creating a home out of nowhere, on my own. And so far, I'm pretty sure it's failed. There's hope, but for now I think it's just a city I have to spend the next few years in with people I love, sure, but even my people-love needs the foundation of city-love.
So there I am, a disconnected home in Kuwait, a steady home in California, and a figment of college home in Manchester. And what do my parents decide to do?
Move to the UAE, of course.
I'm not deeply bothered by this move or anything but it just got my mind on its mental toes. Because now, we're moving back to the Middle East, my childhood home, right? But silly me I've gone and settled myself in California, heartily and happily. As excited as I am to be being pulled back closer to Kuwait, the UAE is not my home. And I won't be there to make it my home. I'm not going to school there or spending long summers there making friends with my parents' friends' kids -- you know those kind of relationships. To be honest, I don't even know when I will be going to the UAE much. Maybe an easter break here or there. Because now that my family is moving away from California and I'd say my brother and I are still firmly based here, we'll be coming home to either here without the family of home or we'll be going home to the UAE where only our family is home. (Not that you should need much more than family to make your home but this is a big jump, really.)
I'm currently settled in Manchester, only just realising California is my home, reminiscing about the golden days of Kuwait home and my family is shifting across the world. Again, except this time, without me. Which makes this shift so utterly strange. If my family comes home to California on vacations, when do I go home to Kuwait? And when do I get the chance to make Abu Dhabi my home? Does that even matter? It's just where my parents are going to live for the few years to come.
So home now becomes the abstract concept that it has always been but with a little more detachment. I imagine every college kid goes through this, right? But maybe the others just have the home home and the college home to sort out. Homesick for home while you're at school and homesick for school when you're away. I'm not homesick for school. In fact, I wish I could stay here in CA for the next year, at least. When I think of the next few years in my head, visually, it pretty much goes grey after next summer, when my family will have made the official move. It's just an uncertainty I have to deal with and put my faith in the fact that everything goes as planned, right?
My parents say it's our plight as Palestinians, to have no home (yet), that the world is our home. I like that, the world is our home. I like that better than feeling the existence of a specific landmark is necessary for home. And maybe it helps that I am at home within myself. My home is anywhere I want it to be and I'm glad because I plan on making the entire world my home and I think I've already got a good chunk of it down.
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