The Return
No one ever talks about the displacement that immigrants feel when they are forced to return to their home countries.
No, I’m not trying to take away from the struggles of first- or second-generation immigrants. No, I’m definitely not trying to turn this into some sort of “suffering Olympics”.
God knows we’ve all had enough of these “suffering Olympics” in our daily life. No, auntie, I really don’t think my depression is comparable to your hairdresser screwing up your trim. I’m sorry for your loss, but it really is apples and oranges.
But I’d just like to take a second to talk about the feelings that come with it. The struggles. The scramble of desperation as we cling to our newfound values threatened to be stripped bare by a forced re-entry, the dread that has a firm grasp on our hearts as we think about how you have to re-adapt to your birth country, and the thoughts that continue to swirl in your head like a maelstrom about what the future holds — if it’s even worth it anymore.
Hear me out, even if just for a second.
I grew up in a conservative country from birth until my late teens, and I remember that when I first immigrated to Australia, I kept thinking about how this is a fresh start.
Not many get to do this, after all. And not many are fortunate enough to have a family that can help to support you financially, especially with the absolutely brutal exchange rate that we developing countries continue to face (or as I’d like to put it, countries that are doing their best to recover from colonialism. But that’s a discussion for another time.)
I had all intents and purposes to actually immigrate here. But I kept trying not to think about it, and tell people that “Well, I don’t really know about it, I’d like to focus on other things first…”, out of fear of jinxing it in the future.
Am I superstitious? Not really. Well, maybe. I just really wanted to be sure that past me did not screw it up for future me.
Not especially when you’ve discovered a newfound identity, what with finding out your truest self and who you really are, but knowing that this might not be something acceptable back home.
Not especially when your parents continue to talk to you about the things that people who look like you, with this specific skin colour and eye shape, have to face. The atrocities that we continue to get on a daily basis. It’s even worse when you think about the covert discrimination that people who look like you continue to face. (A friend was rejected from a pretty well-known University because of their ethnicity. Go figure!)
Not especially when you know that if or when you return, you’ll get asked a bunch of questions. By relatives who have already secured living here, why you want to return to a country that’s unfair and messed up. By relatives who are back home, why you chose to return when you could have had a better life there. (It’s worse if they start mentioning the other sex. Auntie, I’m genuinely not interested in your friend’s friend’s nice doctor son!)
It gets more confusing when it concerns your more personal circles.
My example is my own mother, who I’ve perceived to have been emotionally absent for most of my formative childhood, as begins to talk about how much she misses you and how she can’t wait for you to come back.
It makes you wonder — do you miss the child you sent off at the airport seven years ago, or do you miss who I am now, mother? The adult riddled with anxiety, depression, and a profound fear of death? The adult active on social justice platforms, planning a second tattoo? The adult who fears re-entry into my own homeland because I don’t know if I even get to call it home anymore?
But, I digress.
For a while, I thought that having to pack would have been the worst part.
Having to store away the memories, the greeting cards, the presents… Everything.
But I was wrong.
Re-entering was the worst part.
Sitting alone in silence, in familiar surroundings that should be giving you comfort has instead provided me a sense of something truly unnerving.
Having to step on familiar soil, seeing people speak a familiar language, shouting directions about where to go and what to do next as you carry suitcases filled with remnants of the life you’d hoped to have, but you’ve had to push them all in to fit, and lock them tight.
As I sit in the hotel where I have to isolate for the next couple of weeks, I’m greeted with familiar sights outside the window. Tall skyscrapers that taunt the tower of Babel, grey clouds filled with pollutions and broken dreams, and scarce greenery that seem to struggle against the pearl white, sleek office buildings who continue to assert itself as the face of progress and modernity.
In writing this, I need to state that I don’t hate where I was born.
But instead, in the time that I’ve spent away, I’ve become afraid of the soil that I was born in.
I’ve become afraid for myself and for my values, that perhaps they may wane because maybe, I have to figure out how to fit in or risk being the odd one out all my life.
I’ve become afraid of words from others, because I’ve become “too Westernised” or “different”, or “not one of us”. Sure, it’s easy to look away when someone points at you and talks nonsense, but you still hear them. And words do cut pretty deep when it’s about something you’re particularly insecure about.
I’ve become afraid of my thoughts, that I had tried my best, and offered all I had, and yet it was not enough. Actually, it wasn’t that it wasn’t enough — it was the fact that the pandemic struck, and it completely stripped me away from what I held dear. Sure, you can’t control some things, but you can control how you react… But what I mean is knowing that just about anything can strike at any time, and will ruin years and years of planning in a snap. And it can be as severe as a global pandemic that continues to raze civilisations and ravage lives, even after a year in.
It’s easy to say that it’s fine, you’ve got other opportunities, and you’re still young. That much, I know.
But as I write away on my laptop to the sound of the TV reporting the new daily cases statistics in a language different than what I am writing in, I wonder, and I wonder.
And I am aware that these feelings are valid, and so I’m not going to dismiss them for now. And right now, I definitely loathe receiving “you’ll be fine!” “you’re still young!” when all I want to is just sit alone, and process what I’ve been through.
Know that I definitely understand that I’ll have to stand up and fight for myself again. And know that deep in my heart, I haven’t given up on the future.
But for now, I deserve a break. I’d like to lie down on the (metaphorical) grass, and close my eyes as I try to think about the silver linings of being back home, however long that may be.
…Some takeaway noodles from the shopping mall next door would be nice.
