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Chasing the Itch

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Author:
avalexan

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I am the child of immigrants. But not immigrants truly, because my parents never wanted to immigrate. They wanted to do what had to be done and return to Bulgaria as soon as possible. I was born in Bulgaria, I moved to Chicago when I was six, and then I travelled back to Bulgaria every summer. For all my life until the past three years, my friends spoke at least two languages, English and Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Hindi, Arabic, Vietnamese, Bosnian, Italian. I could count on one hand the number of people I hung out with who only spoke English. Every time the weather got warm I got wanderlust, ever since I could remember. Not just to go “home” to Bulgaria, but everywhere; the London and Paris and India and Italy that I cut out of pages of travel magazines and read about i my history books, and every summer my friends and I vacated the city and sprinkled all over the world. The itch took over and the itch catapulted me into a place I’d dreamed of all year. But then I got there, and there was always something missing. It was never quite home. And then I returned, and school began, but that wasn’t quite home either. And then college happened. NYU is not a place of “diversity”, whatever the brochures may try to tell you. Now, my friends speak English. That’s it. My books, my things, are all stuffed into a dorm room and packed in boxes and suitcases at the beginning and at the end of every semester, and that’s not quite home either. And now and then I get the itch, the itch that my monolingual friends can never understand, I get the itch to go to some place that I have never been, some place that just might be home.And I hate that itch, because at the end of the trip I always feel over-full and empty, dizzy and alone, home and far away, isolated from everyone I know. And no one can understand why I didn’t take a million pictures on my trip (I hate taking pictures of places I’m going to for the first time), why I’m not super excited to tell them all about my trip. Because when I’m back from a trip I still haven’t found home, not in that far place I was at, and not in this place that I’ve returned my suitcase to. Because “home” is not a place, not a structure or a culture or a point on a map. Home is just a feeling, one I’ve been running after before I even knew why I ran. And now the world is asking me to be friends with these people that have nooooo idea of the storm that’s inside my head, and I don’t know if I can do it. How do you do it?


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June 24, 2008 | Filed Under Blog 

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Comments

5 Responses to “Chasing the Itch”

  1. 1
    Brice
    Brice Says:
    June 30th, 2008 at 1:15 am

    I love this post. I’m looking forward to hear what people say about this.

    (Is this spam?)

  2. 2
    Caitlin
    Caitlin Says:
    August 10th, 2008 at 8:14 am

    I’m sorry I didn’t see this before, but I wanted to say you have such a way with words…
    “Because “home” is not a place, not a structure or a culture or a point on a map. Home is just a feeling, one I’ve been running after before I even knew why I ran.”
    That’s honestly beautiful.

    (Is this spam?)

  3. 3
    Unregistered
    warona Says:
    August 10th, 2008 at 11:50 am

    chasing “home”, yeah, i know the feeling. i think for me it was about finding out where i feel at home and then trying to find that geographically.

    that turned out to be my first mistake. i think for tcks, home is not geographical, and that is a hard thing to realise and deal with because really only tcks and others that have ben diplaced feel this. but what i have found is that i am most at home amongst a very diverse group of friends. i grew up in international school from pre-kindergarten to IB and when i got to college i was homesick for the first time, but it wasn’t for botswana, or even swaziland (the last country i lived in before i moved to the states for college) it was for my friends. and after a while i realised it was not just that i missed my friends, i misses international, intercultural banter.

    so i set out to find me a group of mixed friends and did just that. knowing my friends come from all over means that i don’t go so stir crazy when dealing with my mono-cultural friends.

    anyway, the trick is to remember a time you most felt at “home” (sounds to me like when you were surrounded my internationals) and then try to set that up for yourself. is it extra work? yes. is it not fair that as tcks we have to work harder just to feel comfortable? maybe. but hey, at the end of the day we gotta do what we gotta do, right?

    hope that helped, and happy hunting.
    warona

    (Is this spam?)

  4. 4
    Selam
    Selam Says:
    August 10th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    “And now the world is asking me to be friends with these people that have nooooo idea of the storm that’s inside my head, and I don’t know if I can do it”

    I’m also going to University this fall…
    and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to do it.

    When we move to a new place we want to find people that can understand us as TCK’s right. People that understand that “storm.” You may… in international or multicultural people like Warona suggested. There may even be TCK’s in your area that you can relate to.

    I think it’s important to keep in mind though, that you mustn’t feel as if these are the only kinds of people you can relate to. And then as a result shut everyone else out… So be open to people. You may be surprised at what you find.

    (Is this spam?)

  5. 5
    mmmmmm
    mmmmmm Says:
    August 10th, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    i think i got sick of chasing home. i always tell ppl… I survive on my own memories and in other people’s memories.
    What are we if we don’t remember the past? Nothing, we can’t just leave a memory behind because it would be equivalant to leaving a part of us behind. We are shaped by memories…of different places and dynamics.
    What are we if nobody remembers us? As sad as this sounds…Nothing. Because that’s like erasing our existence completely.

    My greatest fear is the fear to be forgotten, that’s why I make connection with people instead of places. I want to grab their heart forever, I wish I had invisible and extendable chains that I can attach to people’s heart and my own. So no matter where I go, I know I am secured.

    SO in the end i realize the only way to find home, is to remember and be remembered.

    Funny how non-tcks would probably think making connection with ppl is so much harder and they would rather connect with places…unfortunately we cant.

    (Is this spam?)

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