Remind me.

- Aranyi

(Pic via Carl Lee on Flickr)

I don’t know if I’ve been attached to any particular city. I was never part of Bombay’s pulse – I always felt as though I led an existence parallel to it. I might wish to be buried on Vassar’s grounds in Poughkeepsie, if I wished to be buried – and Bath – Bath is

my idea of heaven. New jersey’s greenery surprises me, and its roads bore me. New York is all very well, but too noisy and lonely all at once for me. So if I never felt attached to any place, how could I feel displaced? But I do.

You see, the balance of power in my life has shifted. I have teetered off the pedestal I had been placed on, and now I stand askew, one leg pointed up, waiting to be placed in the direction I am to be ordered in. Hence I stand, face pointed down, like an immortalized clumsy ballet dancer. Note the porcelain face, the graceful neck, contrasted with that ugly, unnatural pose. I am dangerously close to falling, looking into an abyss that I have no idea how to emerge from.

But this odd limbo has given me plenty of time to think, and feel, and learn to not feel. And cry and cry and realize that I still do. And in trying to mentally erase myself from existence ive made my physical presence all the more substantial through the staying power of chocolates. Ive felt alien for so long that I’ve forgotten what it is to be at home.

But I do know what home means, to me. Home is a place where I don’t have to be afraid of what I say and to whom. Where there are no repercussions and no blame. Where I am strong enough, brave enough, right enough, mature enough. Where what I feel and what I think and who I am, mistakes, stupidity, silliness and all, has a valid place. It’s a place deep inside me that no one knows, that no one can even fathom. It’s a place that’s waiting for me to stumble across it on a quiet glossy morning, and it’s a place that’ll never make me want to go back to this other one that I’m in.

If home is where the heart is, it’s high time I find mine.