The title of this was rewritten so many times. I had metaphors about why I fall in love so often and why I am so emotional and why I am so indecisive, but it all leads down to I have two hearts.
I was thinking about it a lot yesterday as I was crying and fretting over my Sonoma State housing problems, and I think that I genuinely have things to be emotional and upset about. I do not live in a third world country, I have parents who love and support me, I for the most part have good health, but my life is still hard. My life has always been hard. This got me thinking about when life started throwing curveballs at me and I realized that I never had the same home life that other kids did, I didn't even know where I was supposed to consider my home. My childhood was full of awkward conversations and secrecy from administration. I had created a stigma against my own "real" house that created not only fear but over glorifying my "fake" home. I always felt more at home where I went to school and with my Grandmother, and a lot of the time now when I talk about my childhood I tend to block out the memories that were created at night and on the weekends, even though there were some really good times.
My high school therapist tried to make me talk about my two homes thing, but I would put on the same face of secrecy I thought would protect me. I would not tell her all the facts and the important issues and actual problems I had with it would get lost. I bring this up because I feel like I still rely on being split in two. I have only lived in one place for four years of my memory. Since it was high school and I had so much other turmoil in my life from other stressors I did not even take the time to acknowledge the stability it created. I did not really understand how to have people over and I was, and still am, embarrassed to. In our entire 3 year relationship my best friend had been to my house once, and that was after we had dated for four months and knew each other for almost a year. A few times when I needed to pick something up from home I would take him over and make him wait in the car in the driveway while I ran in as quickly as I could. I left for college and again was divided in two. I settled in my dorm of course, but living only two hours away makes it easy to rely on going home. I never transferred my life to Sonoma. I did not start going to a doctor up there until last year, when I was instructed to find one the first month of freshman year. I do not let people into my rooms at school. I remember last year I literally wrestled with my friend in the stairwell because he wanted to go through my room to use the bathroom. After I locked myself in my room and cried. My room in Denmark is a very central location, but I make people stay in the kitchen. No one is allowed in my room and I get heightened anxiety if someone knocks on my door. I have this image of what home should be, of perfection that I will never be able to reach. The only time I allow people to see my "home" is when it is so clean and sterile it doesn't even look like someone lives there, even though I do not care at all about mess when I visit other people's homes. If you notice I have not even posted pictures of my room on facebook, which is what every study abroad student is supposed to do the first week.
I am really thinking about this now, when I am 5,500 miles away from "home". Denmark feels like home, and California feels like home. I am worried that for the rest of my life I will have the sense of being split, of not knowing where I belong. It is not the same as when I grew up, and I will not have to keep Denmark a secret, but I realize that there is so much about my study abroad experience that no one cares about except for me that it will end up not being talked about anyways. I want to feel like I belong. I do not want to be in a limbo, but I would rather be in the limbo and get these fabulous experiences than feel a sense of belonging and be ignorant. Thanks parents for letting me grow up with the opportunity to go to good schools and the chance to know and love the amazing woman who was my Grandmother.
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