About Coming and Going

The voters have spoken. Here 'tis per your request.

A few Sundays ago I caught up with David - who is friend though it feels strange to call him so because we've never hung out other than the random but in-depth 20 min. conversations we get into when we bump into each other at church, which is about once in every 3 months the last 5 years. Yeah, he's a busy, busy PhD candidate. He always asks me about my grad school plans and either gives me a good pep talk or a kick in the butt depending on my answer. We bond over talks about school, common love for Philadelphia (where we lived), and of course, for traveling.

We had been lingering in the almost-empty parking lot when the conversation inevitably turned to another commonality of ours.

F: How long have you been here?
D: 10 years.
F: That's how long I've been here.
D: Crazy huh?
Yeah. Didn't think it would be like this.
Me either. I thought, two years, three years tops, I'm going to do the tennis thing, have fun, and then go home see what happens.
And now look at you.
Sheesh, I know.
I don't have a 5 yr plan anymore. Shrug. It's kind of pointless. You never know!
That's true. When people ask me what I'm going to do next...
Yea that's a hard question.
Another increasingly difficult question is "Where are you from?" - that's really hard to answer.

I stopped. And thought. Yes. It really is.

You see, D and I did not grow up here. We're citizens of other countries (he: NZ and me: Indo) yet we don't always feel like we belong there anymore. We've lived elsewhere too long to have a pulse on what our countrymen/women feel/do/think. Yet we don't quite belong here. We blend in with ease, but there's too much we owe to the people, the food, the air of another land.

I imagine traveling to, say, Central America (wink wink), meeting people there who will ask me, "Where are you from?" and me pausing, not sure how to say "Indonesia" or "The US" without some discomfort or sense that I'm not being all true. Yet I'm not homeless. It's the opposite if anything: I have multiple homes.

I know people who will never consider living anywhere else - not another city or state here in the US other than the one they grew up in, let alone another country. It just doesn't occur to them.

But as for me I'm in trouble. Everything is in play. Maybe it's just the way I'm made. A vagabond, restless until I return to my real home, the place that has to be believed in order to be seen.

So where am I going?

Everywhere, of course!