You CAN go home again....at least to Bundang

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Home again, home again. And this time, that "coming home" feeling after a long holiday- that feeling that you no longer need to expend yourself, no longer need to BE somebody else, you can just relax and live "normally"- that feeling is here. And yet, as would be expected, it feels nothing like that.

A few weeks in the Philippines, as it turns out, was exactly what I needed to kick start the next few years of my independent. Before the Philippines I was still holding on, still in that transitional stage of "what do I bring from home here? how far will I let myself wander? how many barriers will I let myself break? how will I ever be comfortable in such a different context?" But now, upon returning to the only thing I can call a home base in this hemisphere, I realize that I have found that place where those questions fade and I can just let myself be in this environment and not use so much energy trying to test the limits of myself. Limits will be tested without my consciousness of every strand being tugged at. Maybe none of this makes sense to anyone but me, but for the first time in my life, what makes sense to me is the only thing that matters. That's why I gave it all up at home...that's why I needed to go so far away....to figure out what makes sense to me competely outside the expectations of everyone I love that knows me in a certain way.

I wrote this to myself on the bus ride home last night....

Who you are is a story. They say the only way to relate yourself today to a picture of yourself in the past is by weaving a delicate fairy tale of your life. Memory is falliable and inconsistent. Stories turn to myth. The truth is, so much of life is what is going on in the "right now". We define ourselves by expectations- the expectations of personality, of fear, of limit, of obligation. But what happens when we set out on the road and cut those strings that arbitraily bind us to "who we are" is fascinating. Suddenly a person becomes the choices they make in the now. Freedom is merely the accepting that in any given moment you can be whoever you want to be. That is liberation.

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Photos

Snowfall on our street
A quick picture for evidence before it melts as if it was never there....it'll stay cold though. Only the crap part of winter sticks around here

Comments

[Chrisy]

This is beautiful
if I didn't know you were an english major... you should save all this and do something with it when you have time - its very graceful writing, I feel like I could have been there with you. I smelled indonesia the other day, someone was barbecuing something fatty, and it took me right back. miss you tons, sending my love always (all ways!)