I’ve heard of people going back home after living abroad for a while and feeling self-conscious, out of place. As if they can no longer relate to the people from their hometown. It’s isolating, I imagine, to feel disconnected from the people and the place that witnessed their formative years.

For me, going back home for the first time since expatriating was disorienting, but I had a different experience.

Stepping back onto the soil I knew so well — the smells of Texas, the long stretches of overpasses that led to shopping plazas or nothing at all, and that heat, my God, that heat — transported me back to my adolescence. 

This was the town I hit puberty in. The town where I first learned what it was to like someone so much it hurts. The town where I spent almost all my weekends at the age of fourteen at the roller rink. The same town that I knew like the back of my hand — I could still drive the same mindless routes to the superstores that my friends and I wandered around in when we had nothing better to do (and in the suburbs we almost never had anything better to do). 

This was the town that I hated, that I so badly wanted to flee from, the town I associated with boredom, ignorance, bigotry. I remember so vividly feeling like an alien on my home planet.

But also, it was the town that raised me. I thought I always knew there was life outside of Katy, Texas but I didn’t really get to experience it and truly understand everything that it encompassed until I left for a while.

When I came back home for the first time I was awoken, rather briskly, by the realization that there was this other person inside of me, one that walked with her chin held high and in a confident posture. I felt unafraid of the world. 

Because in Texas, I have no shame. These people don’t impress me. They don’t intimidate me. I know them for who they are — so easily placeable in a tight, little box. Film bro, sorority girl, liberal, conservative, someone who gets me, someone who doesn’t. 

I’m the funniest when I’m at home. The most reckless. I have no care in the world. I’m happy, I’m generous, I speak up for myself effortlessly. 

In Paris, another less familiar, less well-acquainted side comes out. I’m shy. My self-advocacy is easily thrown out the door. It’s something I have to think about. Put energy into. Relearn every day.

I’m drawn into myself. I’m self-conscious. I can come off as mean. I like to think it’s because I’m protecting myself, but really, it’s because of all my nerves and how scared I am. How hard it all is.

So at first, I was shocked and also liberated to come home and release this lighter, funnier, kinder version of myself into the spotlight again. I exhaled, so incredibly relieved. I am layered. I am complex. I am not this way, or that. No one can fit me in a box because I’ve moved away from that possibility of being stuck there for too long. 

And finally it all starts to make sense — I am nice, I am adventurous, I am brave — moving to Paris, becoming an expat has made me believe I was one way, it hardened me, convinced me I’d be like this forever, but my life here is just starting out. Of course I’m acting like this. Of course all I can think about are the differences between home and here. There’s still so much room for my life to change. 

I feel immensely fortunate to have been struck by this sense of duality. While I know fear and anxiety well, I also know assurance, confidence, comfortability. Not everyone gets to feel these things. I am so lucky to have two lives, one that can nourish the other while in pain. One that discovers something that helps revitalize the broken side of myself. Not everyone has this same experience being an expatriate and I will always count my lucky stars for this.

And I’m not saying I felt this ease and comfort right after I stepped off the eleven-hour plane ride. I remember initially wincing at the loudness of public spaces. The airport, coffee shops, malls. I’d cover my ears and buckle down — bracing myself for all that noise. It was the first time I truly recognized how loud Americans tended to be. 

But eventually I embraced it. I rejoiced in it. These are my people. My silly, ignorant, superficially sweet people. 

I learned to collect the noise, open my heart up to it, and embrace that cafe culture in America wasn’t just about working on your laptop. It was also about eavesdropping too.

I learned to feel completely and utterly at peace. Despite all the noise. Because while I know people can sometimes feel lost going back home, I felt revitalized.

Photo by Roberta Guillen on Unsplash

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