Zenith of Self

One year, one month, one week, 2 days and this morning since I last stepped foot on American soil. I’m collecting my things for a visit back; going home to a home that doesn’t exist anymore. For that matter, did it ever exist? I’ve been adrift, there’s comfort here, I fear getting stuck again.

There is no going back. I’ve burned too many bridges, there is no soft landing. If I’m lucky, my momentum won’t carry me over the precipice. A thousand memories flood my mind: returnings and reunions, the release of tension, the embrace of comfort, the churning scents of places, people, things once considered home. None of that awaits me now, least of all the connection. I am not who I was, the land is not what I left.

A younger me stands at the threshold of adulthood. I do not know how I fit in the world. Does anyone ever truly know? I long to find the place that feels like mine. I follow the path laid before me; the shape of a life forms around me. Am I even the architect? Foundations laid by unseen hands with implicit expectations, the sins of my forefathers engraved in every stone. These were never my wants or my desires. This life was supposed to be mine, and mine alone.

The creep of uncertainty reveals fissures, the vines and roots of my true self sunder the fossilizing shell; a cage forged by ideology crumbling beneath the weight of self acceptance. I pick at the edges, smoothing, reshaping; bits fall away to nothing. I grasp at frayed ends, shielding my now vulnerable core behind tattered remnants of a person that never was; scrabbling…