Home is where you make it.
I became a permanent foreigner eight years ago. Before that word "foreigner" used to have an exotic scent to me, nowadays it has beige color of reality. I have become such a foreigner that talking to people from my own country being abroad is weird and usually I avoid them. It might make you think I am arrogant but the deal is that I don't feel any closer to them than other foreigners just because we speak same language and come from same country. I learned not to be homesick, I just became generally "peoplesick" and started really getting the idea of "wherever you go you can't run away from yourself, you always take yourself with you". And that's where I learned to not have a home, but make a home where I am.
35mm film by tina_levyz. Analog photography, Shanghai. Picture taken in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Every year I hear from many foreigners their excited "I booked my flights back home for holidays", those holidays never end melting from summer vacation to Christmas and so on. As soon as topic of conversation gets to this point I immediately get an unpleasant shiver. Don't get me wrong, I am happy for those people who are happy about going home. But blinded by their own excitement they don't realize that there are many people who, when they go "home" for a short visit, have same excitement checking in to their flight "back away".
People leave home for different reasons and some times those reasons are for the better so flying back somewhere where you were leaving with no looking back doesn't sound like a good idea.
Reason of avoiding fighting and getting injured for political ideas sounds like a good reason. Leaving "home" for possibility to have life above poverty level sounds like a good idea. Leaving because your hometown became a dangerous place or people surrounding you became dangerous sounds like a good reason. Possibility to study and be independent sounds like a good idea. Leaving a crazy stalking ex husband sounds not that bad too. And there are many other stronger reasons to make a home somewhere else on this planet.
Spending thousands of dollars for a 7 day trip back "home" to eat at one table with people who are your family but who learned to be one online and both sides are ok with that, doesn't sound like a good idea.
And what do you think is mine?;)