Homecoming

I am writing to you from a place that feels like home

And yet is not my home.

What do I mean by home?

I mean it’s a place where my body feels soft.

I do not need to tense and be vigilant as I walk the streets, my nervous system bracing and scanning for threats.

My shoulders drop, my jaw loosens, I feel at peace.

Maybe peace is not the right word because there is always something in me tugging at my insides, telling me I do not belong and that this is not home, so don’t get too comfortable.

I am wondering where you are now. What you’re up to. Who you are with, what you are laughing about with that wide generous mouth of yours, what deliciousness you are filling your belly with. And what home feels like to you.

*

This is not the first time I have tried to reach someone who cannot be reached.

*

Everything aches these days. I feel time pressing against me like the hardness of a stranger in a dark room.

But there is a flame of longing and desire burning deep within a desire for aliveness that does not always extend to the outside world.

I didn’t want my longing to define me but lately it’s been consuming me.

All immigrant stories are about longing.

And belonging.

But longing comes first.

A girl came up to me in the classroom at primary school. She said her mum asked her if I was Chinese, and the way to tell was to check if I had slitty eyes. The first day of secondary school a girl warned the other classmates not to go near me.

Their breath smells like fish.

I was alone, so I knew grammatically she should have said ‘her’ rather than ‘their’, but I also understood by then that there was a ‘they’ and an ‘us’, and I didn’t get to choose which side I was on.

My cousin from Hong Kong came to stay and helped me put sellotape on my eyelids to try to make them bigger and create creases in them like everyone else seemed to have.

She told me to leave it on overnight but I didn’t know how to sleep with my eyes open.

My mum kept telling me to pull my nose up, make it grow higher and narrower. She said I could try putting a clothes peg on it.

But I can’t breathe, I said.

Before I knew pleasure in my body, I knew shame.

*

I went travelling alone at eighteen, and moved abroad for the first time at twenty. I found it easier to be labelled a foreigner in a strange country than to be treated like one in the country of my birth.

*

Your silence will not protect you, writes Audre Lorde.

What do you need to say?

A woman I have not been in touch with for years messages me. I notice her name doesn’t come up on screen, just her number. I must have deleted her as a contact but I don’t remember when.

The more I heal, the less I am able to access the memories I am trying to write about. But I’m not sure if that is real healing or a form of dissociation, my nervous system leaping into survival mode and shielding me from truths too painful to keep returning to.

So when this woman messages me, it is a half memory that flashes before me. A kitchen on the top floor of the building, bowls of pasta maybe, a feeling flooding through my body that I know so well as shame. And I push it away, this scene, because I don’t want to be engulfed in it.

And it would be easy to leave it here. To forget, or try to forget. But isn’t forgetting another form of silencing?

When have I silenced myself

And when have I been silenced by others?

Let’s say this woman who I have not been in touch with for years was once a friend.

Let’s say I can’t remember the details, or let’s say the details are none of your business.

Let’s say this woman is a white woman.Type to enter

Let’s say her voice is sharp and unforgiving. Let’s say empathy doesn’t always come naturally to her, and let’s say I have a history of trying to seek understanding and love from those who cannot give it, although I did not know that then.

Let’s say I do remember, and I remember the tone in her voice and I remember her words, and the wound they created in my heart which was already so tender and raw, and - now it shames me to admit - trusting.

To trust someone with your truth who doesn’t want to hear it.

And let’s say she was not alone, this woman. Let’s say there were several of them, just like her. Let’s say you knew them too.

And their voices drowned yours. And their opinions shot back at you like an army of air rifles against your toy shield.

When the man in that bar in Camden calls you a *************

And they all laugh along with him

And you can’t bring yourself to smile or laugh with them but you can’t show your rage and hurt because

You shouldn’t be so sensitive

And

It’s just a joke

So you blink away the tears and the pain because this is what you are used to. And their voices are too loud and too many and yours cannot be heard so all you hear is a truth that isn’t yours.

And when the man you are seeing comes over that time and ************ and you are scared and you call her the next day and she says

Why did you let him do it

And you hear that sharp voice again that is so familiar but still you do not get it and you do not let go.

So in that kitchen over pasta when you tell her you need to speak out, that something happened at work that wasn’t right, that has left you shaken and raging, something that was, and it really was, just racist

And she tells you to

Stop

Stop being a victim

You’re making people feel uncomfortable

And shame fills your being

And you are quiet once again.

Another response of the nervous system when it comes across a threat is to freeze.

Words stick in your throat

Perhaps you stop breathing

It has taken me a long time to come unfrozen.

*

And let’s say now you are back in your body, that you have learned to feel again, that you are no longer numb, that your body can speak, that silence is no longer your default although it is still unnatural because years of programming do not come undone overnight.

And let’s say you are back home now

Back home in your body

Your body is your home

In all its exquisite tenderness and softness

So you look at your phone

And you see this message from this woman

And you flick your thumb across the screen as though flicking away a tiny ant crawling across it

And the message is gone.

*

Over the years I realised that wherever I go in the world, I meet fellow travellers all searching for home. Sometimes they have been searching their whole lives. I wonder if they will ever stop. I recognise the restlessness, the endless questioning, wandering and searching, the inability to stay rooted in one place.

The more I heal, the less I want to remember what it used to feel like to be me.

Written by Elizabeth Chan