Nowhere Home-Haver

 

Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

    The first time I went abroad, I'd worked 16+ hour days, 6 days per week, for 2 years. There was a desperate fire in me to escape my rural Mississippi upbringing, and determination enough to do it on my minimum wage salary, against all odds. It still rings in my head that when I made a budget that included a phone service, my mother said I was living "a champagne lifestyle on a beer budget" and while I don't think the reason for that was having phone service when I went abroad, I guess having to work so hard proved that she wasn't wrong. 

    It's no surprise, then, that I'm the only one in my family with a passport. In fact, a lot of the people of the U.S. where I'm from not only lack a passport but vehemently oppose the idea. Perhaps it's a misguided nationalism or a learned distrust of the unknown. The fact that a foreign country could be considered "the unknown" for most of my family should prove enough. 

    The first country I left for was Japan. I'd studied Japanese through a lifelong interest in music and language, and I was convinced I wouldn't get any better if I didn't go to a place where I could use it. There weren't many opportunities to speak Japanese in the birthplace of Elvis Presley despite disenchanted immigrants working at the town's main source of employment: the Toyota factory. 

    Visiting Japan proved tough, but manageable. I only got lost and had to sleep at a train station bench twice in my two-month stay. I only had a handful of laughable misinterpretations. I was embarrassed when I went to a nice bar trying to chit-chat and being told it was too early. I realized that studying a language and using it are two different beasts, a beast I tried my best to harness when I went on to go back to school to study linguistics. It was a wonderful, eye-opening trip, and a start to my travel journey that I'm happy to have. I distinctly remember an instance where a woman showed me the way to Osaka Castle when I'd just come from Tokyo. I said, "I feel like everyone's staring at me," and she replied, "Well, you have pink and blue hair..." She was right, and I resolved to grow accustomed to being an outsider. After all, it isn't like I fit in much at home, either. 

    Being a foreigner can be tough, but it's different as a tourist compared to an immigrant. As a tourist, you can make all the mistakes you want, and people commend you for trying. As an immigrant, people wonder why you aren't better at a language, and if you make an embarrassing mistake at your favorite food place near your house, you have to look them in the eye every day on your way to work (too specific?). 

    This isn't about my adventures there, my realizations, or the start to my journey as an immigrant abroad. This is about what happened when I came back.

I grew up in a trailer park to a mostly estranged, disjointed family. It was not long after coming back that my mother decided to reconnect with her sister, my aunt. I hadn't seen her in many years and it turns out that she was living high on the hog, now. Her husband got a nice job that allowed them the luxury of a double-wide trailer in the same town of West Point, Mississippi, where I remember being bullied for ridiculous things all those years ago. I was once pulled out of class by a teacher who asked if I had been practicing witchcraft. It was another mark of me never having belonged anywhere. 

We went to see them in a night of drinking. I recognized some classy moves from my own childhood such as blowing smoke in children's faces, throwing garbage in fire for fun, and having adult discussions before them. One child heard a joke about "fucking" and asked me what it was, the youngest adult in the room and a stranger. I handled that conversation as delicately and compassionately as I was able, and she told me that one time her dad was hurting her step-mom while she pretended to be asleep in the same room. 

Sometimes, not fitting in isn't the worst thing. 

I tried not to talk about my adventures abroad, but it came up in an, "Oh, I heard something about that. How did you get around?" 

"The train system is pretty spectacular, but I took a cab home on late nights out." 

"I wouldn't go anywhere I couldn't have my fuckin' truck." 

Everyone laughed, and my fleeting moment of inclusion dissapated. 

    It kind of baffled me, I guess as much as someone from there was baffled by something so trivial as using the train. I never forgot those words that dismissed the fact that I was the first person they'd ever met that had left the country. 

    I ruminated on that for a while. I still think of it often. In some way, it was a lesson in the shame I would feel for the rest of my life in putting my expectations on people who weren't capable of meeting them. I haven't spoken to any of my family members there since. There were a lot of lessons here in this short span of a few months in my life. 

I decided, with these words in mind, that I would go further. I would do more. I went back to school and moved abroad permanently. If I would never belong, so be it, and let it be in a place where it was expected. My resolve to accept my lack of a place to call home permeated my existence. I now roam the streets of any country I please and I make new friends, have new experiences, enjoy my job, and most importantly, never, ever fit in.