Love me America

There's an innate unease in the human spirit, pushing for a change of abode. This is due to the human possession of a fickle and unsettled mind. The mind is never in a state of rest; it flits around, turning its thoughts toward all kinds of known and unknown places. It's like a wanderer that can't stand still, finding its greatest pleasure in the allure of the new and unfamiliar.

As I reflect on the final dates of my last “free” summer, I feel ready to take on being back on my insular college campus in the States. I don't intend on this piece to sound like an ode to the US given there isn’t much I observed to praise just yet. What I have to offer, though, is the consolidation I found in navigating the latest change of abode in my life.

Upon landing after the longest and most uncomfortable flight of my life, Boston felt abruptly absent in novelty. Just another city, I thought. I just needed to go to East Boston (wherever that was) first and then to Harvard’s campus. I stayed with my friend for a couple of days before taking the coach to Dartmouth. I didn’t even know where to go for my Uber pickup. Thankfully, I saw a woman greeting whom I assumed to be his father in Turkish. I told her: “If it isn’t painfully obvious enough, this is my first time in the US” in Turkish as they pointed the way to my Uber. I told my Uber driver the same; it was in English and had a more insecure tone.

Colors looked so saturated as I gawked at everything around me, desperate to contain my in-awe-ness so that others wouldn’t clock me as a first-timer (anyone with eyes could and they definitely did). A giant billboard of a moonrock joint for 10 bucks and the lack of omnipresent self-masturbatory political advertisement greeted me with a seemingly distant hug– one I was content to embrace.

It felt alien, not knowing when to cross the street, how to tip at what rate, or even what candy kids ate growing up (something that weirdly came up a lot during a canoeing trip, part of my college’s orientation programming). I was a child again, catching up on a reality that is objectively not mine to live. I over-explained myself to people often, disparagingly assuming my life was inherently unintelligible and thus requisites context in the past tense. I asked myself:

When are you gonna stop wearing that chip on your shoulder?

One day, I sort of consciously stopped. A conversation with a friend over spring break in Chicago made me realize there should be a sense of purpose attached to my moving across the ocean. My cat’s passing away a week after spring break solidified my sacrifice: being away from anything I’ve ever claimed to be mine.

I deserve a dignified life, doing things I want without being hammered down or undervalued. How nonsensical it is to conceive that the human mind, constructed from the same elements as divine beings, opposes movement and change of abode, while the divine nature finds joy and even self-preservation in perpetual and highly rapid change!

Things are actively getting better as I started to abolish positioning myself in an in-between. I am not “in-between” the US and Turkey. I also don’t need to choose one over the other to self-actualize. I choose to come home to myself because I’m fortunate enough to have my home travel with me. I am at home, wherever it might be.

Everything has changed and yet, I’m more me than I’ve ever been.