my home exists only in nostalgia

the painful reality of living abroad as a third-culture kid

Marie-Guillemine Benoist - Psyche Bidding Her Family Farewell

8 years ago—with exactly 1 oversized suitcase filled to the brim with the hopes and dreams of my family— i moved to this country. there is something they don’t tell you about moving oceans away from where you’re from though. perhaps because it should be painstakingly obvious. unfortunately, at 18, i had been too naive to grasp the heart-rending reality. home will never be home again.

my parents surely knew this. why else did mom (who never misses a chance to fill silence with chatter) struggle to find words to say goodbye? why else did dad (who watches horror movies deadpan) burst into tears in my college dorm room? at the time, i was puzzled by their reactions. i was sad too but we’d see each other soon for winter break right? orientation events kept me busy as my family of 4 went back home as 3. any homesickness i felt was masked by late-night chats with new friends and even-later-night study sessions.

i did go back for winter break. this time as i was leaving, it was my brother (who only exists to annoy me and pick fights with me) that cried. he said, please don’t leave me alone again. i hugged him and told him to call me any time (that worked with the 7 hour time difference). you must think me heartless or clueless but i still didn’t get why my family was acting so out-of-character. we usually never hugged. we definitely never cried. especially not in public. but now it seemed that Sheremetyevo terminal D became the exception. maybe it was just an aging parents thing. i would come back in 4 months for the summer and things would be just like they were before.

except it took 6 months instead because i signed up for some summer classes. and when i came back for a little more than a month, my dad had met someone who had the perfect internship role for me. so i got busy working. oh well, i’d be back in the winter anyway. and there was always next summer. except, i landed an engineering internship in oregon. my parents didn’t know where that was but they were overjoyed. no one brought up the elephant in the room. we wouldn’t see each other that summer. we could wait till winter right?

and i did go back in the winter once again. we celebrated new years together (at home with a giant bottle of coca-cola) like we always do. we fought like we always do. we (sort of) made up like we always do. see, things were fine. they were. i just didn’t know it would be the last time i went back home.

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