Sometimes I’ll hear a certain chord in a song, or walk by a bar and get a whiff of beer, and I’m instantly transported back home. I think those living away from home will know what I’m talking about. It’s really difficult to describe this feeling, and how acute it is will most probably be directly related to the number of hours you have to fly to get home. But whenever it hits me, it’s always strong enough to make me physically ache to be back in KL. And not back home now, but back home to those days years ago.
I think it’s more a question of state-of-mind, rather than location. I was a lot younger then, and very idealistic — I was all set to take on the world. After all, what did I know? The world, as far as I was concerned, was this vague, fuzzy distant future where there were opportunities aplenty. It was a world I knew as a tourist – clean streets, friendly people, everything shiny and new. I was accepted into one of the best design schools in the world. I was going to be a success, I was going to do great work. And I was going to get there no matter what.
When you’re in college, it feels like you can do anything. There are so many possibilities. All you have to do is make the right choices. I can easily say those early years in college were one of the best times of my life. It was tough, I won’t deny that – design courses are extremely demanding. But for once, I was enjoying what I was doing, my professors were great, I had my mom’s car three times a week, and I had great friends. It was definitely a far cry from high school.
So what if I had to get by on four hours’ sleep a night. So what if my then-boyfriend was always mad at me because I couldn’t go out on the weekends. So what if I had no social life outside my circle of college friends. I didn’t care. My days had focus, and my work consumed me completely. I loved it.
I get flashes of that life now and then. I see the Goddess and I inching our way down Jalan Sultan Ismail, or Tun Razak, me driving with one hand, a piece of toast in the other, and her with her cup noodles. Or driving her car while she crouched in the back putting the finishing touches on her project.
I’d see us at Modesto’s (yeah, this was waaay back when) having a well-deserved break after grueling finals. And trying desperately to stay awake during Design History, not because it was boring, but because I’d stayed up all night working on my calligraphy.
I remember laughing a lot. I remember crying too. There was this time, my dad walked into my room to find me on the bed, foetal position, sobbing in the dark. ‘I’m exhausted, I can’t do this anymore’. He patted me on the shoulder and sat there with me until I stopped crying. Then there were the fights with the boyfriend, ‘I can’t believe you don’t have a few hours to spare from your precious ‘design’ to have dinner with me. It’s fucking Saturday night!’
But mostly, I remember the laughing. Like I said, one of the best times of my life.
So… fast forward almost ten years, and where am I? I live and work in New York city. I have some semblance of a life here – a husband I love dearly, a great job, a core group of friends. Have I made it, like I said I would back then? Yes, I think so. Apart from the husband thing (I never thought I’d get married in America), I’ve achieved everything on that list I made years ago. Which is really saying something since I’m only just out of my twenties. Am I happy? Yes. Contented? Yes.
But.
Yes, there’s a but. Something’s missing. See, when I made that list back then, I didn’t realize that to achieve all of that, I had to give up other things. Things very dear to me. Things that it didn’t occur to me I would miss until they weren’t there. I miss my family. I miss my best friends. I miss the food. I miss having a car. And the more intangible – I miss that sense of confidence that comes with familiarity, in living where you grew up.
It’s been almost seven years, I’ve definitely assimilated. And sure, I speak the language. But bottom line is, this still doesn’t really feel like home. No matter how fluent I am in English, sometimes I still don’t get certain jokes. Or references. It’s a cultural thing.
I would love to be able to meet up with friends at a bar after work, and be able to talk or not talk, and still feel completely comfortable – something that happens only when you’re with absolute best friends. In this group of friends here, none are Malaysian. I love that I have such an international group around me. But sometimes I want to be able to speak Manglish and be understood. I want to be able to say that I finally wore a turquoise blue top after years of avoiding that particular color, and not have to explain that it was because of our hideous school uniforms. I want to say ‘bodek’ and ‘manja’ and have it understood in all its nuances.
There’s still a sense of something being just a little bit off. Of things not quite fitting right, that go way deeper than just the superficialities of food and friends and language.
So, what price having all your dreams come true? Well, maybe goals is a better word in this case. What do you do, when you’ve achieved that one thing you’ve single-mindedly worked and sacrificed for, for years, and then realize that all this comes at a price? A price that’s not just emotional, but mental as well, and much higher than you thought it would be. A price that you pay while you’re pushing yourself trying to get there, and that you’ll still be paying after getting there, for as long as you live?
Do you stop, re-evaluate and change your life, undoing everything that you’ve worked so hard for? Or do you just keep going, and try to ignore that little achey, empty feeling in the corner of your heart?
