I tend to overthink. Somewhere between a month or two after I left my home country, I started worrying if I would still have friends when I go back to live there, or if I would be forgotten.
Even after living abroad for six years, I still continue to worry. Now not so much about friendships, but about my identity. Through living abroad, I've placed so much hope in the moment when I return "home" and feel like I belong again. But what if that hope doesn't end up being realized? What does being "Thai" even mean? What if I think nationalism contributes to war and I don't want to be a part of it?
Poetry is my escape. The words I write don't necessarily make logical sense, but it makes me feel better. I'd like to share a piece I wrote a while back about feeling anxious on "going back", with the hopes that someone might feel the same way, and if so, that they may feel less lonely knowing that they're not alone in these anxieties:
When I go back,
will you wrap your arms around me
even though I smell differently
speak foreignly, think a little too liberally,
will you, will you still love me?
When I go back,
will you re-teach me my language,
re-connect me with my roots,
re-live the years I missed, re-kindle my innocent bliss,
will you, will you still call me yours?
When I go back,
will you provide me with friends,
not "childhood friends", but the ones,
that are ready to make new memories,
and appreciate my multiple identities,
and will they, will they accept me?
When I go back,
will you guarantee me a relevant nationality,
a place I can belong, a culture I can call on,
to answer these confusions, these conundrums,
these clashes of who I am and where I've been,
of when I changed and why I'm me,
Will you cure me, finally,
of these anxieties?
Or will I
forever be a splinter
that doesn't quite fit in right
a thin piece in society
that jabs at its veins
remain unwanted and, ultimately, a pain
but can never be uprooted?
Only there,
slowly growing
insane?
