Of shifting loci and other things

It's nice being home. Not thinking about the next meal, not doing my own laundry, not worrying about how to get someplace. But I'm ready to do something. I am going to work on Monday. I am going to be working with a child psychologist in the General Hospital here in Penang. I still don't know what to expect, but I'm hoping that I'll learn a lot, or at least figure out if this is something I want to be doing with my life.

It's strange to think about life. And the idea of home. What really makes a place "home"? Is it a physical place (i.e. the house you grew up in, the streets you are familiar with, mom's good cooking)? Is it the memories made growing up? Is it where you spend the most time? Is it the place where you feel the safest? Is it the people?

Being a cross-cultural studies concentrator, one would be led to think that I have the answers to that question. And truth be told, I thought I did. After all, we studied the whole entry/re-entry process, the whole culture shock, the concept of home thing ad nauseum in the CCST 115 class. And it definitely helped. But no amount of knowledge prepares you for the way you feel while you go through the cycle over and over again.

So being home this time around hasn't been easy. Not that it's not great to be at home in my own home. Sure there's the usual adjusting to a frame of mind where you are not the only person affected by your actions. You have to think about other people, etc. That's fine. I think I've gotten used to that idea.

But what's been bugging me lately is the shifting locus in relationships. Where I used to fall back on my relationships here in Penang while I was in the US whenever I needed someone to talk to, I feel like there has been a fundamental shift in my relationships in Penang. Maybe it's because I've been away for so long? Or maybe it's because I've changed so much? Or like Cheryl said, it's my hair. Haha. Or is my hair just an outward manifestation of the internal changes that have taken place the past three years I've been away?

Funny how little things spark off big thoughts. It started off with X-Men (everything starts off with X-Men). A friend of mine at Carleton, after watching X-Men, told me he was going home to watch it again with a friend of his because "we always watch X-Men together"!

And now, at home, I realize that I really don't have a friend, or a ready group of friends, to watch Superman with! This may sound really silly (it probably is), but underlying this silly little notion is the nagging thought that I've allowed too much time and distance to pass between my friends and I here in Penang that what I thought existed, is really no more. I guess it's true what they say: the grass is always greener on the other side. I have this "notion" of my relationships with people in Penang and all the people I'm close to when I am in the US, but reality hits me hard when I come back. I usually attribute it to the brief time I spend here in Penang; but I can't help but wonder: is there more that I am not considering? Can someone change so much that even the very things he would have considered to be "unchangeable" have changed?

I guess the big question is: how long can one be stuck between two worlds (to borrow a phrase from a friend of mine) before he loses any or all sense of "home"? Or maybe, can one really live in between two worlds?