There are countless global citizens that move around each year. Sometimes people move for their parents’ jobs, sometimes its to attend boarding schools or colleges. Sometimes people are displaced from their original homes and seek asylum elsewhere. Regardless, these individuals are expected to resettle in a foreign space and that feeling of newness can be daunting. I didn’t realise when I became a part of this group, so I dedicated this piece to them. This is my story. 

What do you call someone who moves around their whole life? 

You don’t. 

Before you can call them anything, they disappear. They drift out of your life as quietly as they came in. Tip toeing, careful not to wake up the monsters inside you that come out from the abandonment. Maybe you remember slivers of their essence, what it felt like to be around them. Maybe a contagious laugh that could wake up a whole room. Perhaps, their effortless walk that convinced you they could march on water. Maybe its a twinkle in their eyes that showed you the beauty the future holds. 

But these are all maybe’s. Possibilities. The daunting thing about possibilities is that they change. 

One day you have their subtle lavender scent ingrained into your mind. The next, you scramble across your rooming picking up objects they had touched to see if they still smelled like them. If they still had their spirit. And when they don’t, you settle. You settle for your scentless emotions. This is not sadness. You still know them. You still talk to them. But even with countless platforms and constant messages, they feel out of reach. They feel like a person you used to know, in a place you don’t.

What do you call yourself, when you have moved around your whole life? 

I don’t think they have developed a term for this yet. Your identity, the thing you show to others, new people, when you meet them for the first time, is just folds of past memories you collected from all the places you were in. Your eyes are still wet from the tears you cried months ago. You ask yourself, “do they remember me?”. But you know the answer to this question. They do remember you, their memories weren’t wipe. They have to remember you. You ask yourself again, “do they remember me, like I remember them?”. This, you do not know the answer to. You remember them as the people who showed you the stars and the sunrise. You remember them as people who brought joy out of the most mundane things. You go into the million pictures you guys took together. You search their faces for signs that they recognise you. They're smiling, that must mean they remember you, right? But this, you do not know the answer to. 

So… you throw yourself into the newness, hoping to find some old comfort. New people, new places, new interests.You are amazed at the colours around you. Everything is brighter. Almost as if they were shined and polished for your welcome. That is the beauty of a new place. Since nothing is familiar, everything is glowing. Crowded markets feel like an experience. Dirtied roads feel like new traditions. This glow dulls over time as your eyes accustom to the stage lights and you slowly start to the cracks in the wall, the wires behind the stage. But that doesn’t matter now because right now everything is at full exposure. But as you sit there, absorbing the questions, the beauty, the novelty of the situation: you miss the withered walls of the place you used to call home. 

You blame yourself for thinking this way. You have had this feeling before. You know this sense. You know that home is a term you can use lightly. But only you, because you have been given a privilege. You get to label many dishes as “comfort foods”. You get to call many apartments “home”. You get to refer to many people as your “family”. Only you. Only. You. 

You feel special yet isolated. Exposed yet confined. Rooted yet drifting.

So you hold on to the familiarity of the feeling. 

As I stare into the green, fresh environment around me and the bright, glowing walls. I wait. I wait for the paint to dull. I wait my eyes to adjust. I wait for the day, where this pristine, minted, unused place becomes my home.