Sorry for bringing the mood down a notch tonight but I had an intense urge to write!
When I was younger I truly believed I was an alien soul in a human body. Of course, I knew my body was human in nature, but I never felt quite human in spirit or mind. I never quite felt like I belonged on this planet. I felt so insanely unattached to the world, like I was never quite present. I felt like half the time my mind was wondering off and living in an alternate reality, one where true happiness existed. I would often feel guilty by not wanting to show my emotions, and how distant I was - It was as if it was a daily struggle just to anchor my feet to the ground and not drift away. I always felt like I had to make an effort to fit in, and that showing “normal” behaviour was like a job to me, much like someone who can’t walk instinctively but instead has to think and act consciously for each step.
Sometimes I feel as if I’m not ready to take on this life, I suppose it’s a comparable feeling to when you’re about to sit an exam you haven’t studied for. I was never prepared or rehearsed for all of these powerful emotions inside of me.
I still feel like this, constantly homesick for a place that doesn’t exist.
The idea of home has always baffled me. There are plenty of places I’ve felt comfortable, wanted and loved, but never home.
Do we know what home is? Sometimes i’d like to think it’s inside of you, and you carry it everywhere you go - but i’ve always sought refuge everywhere except within myself. No matter where I am, I can never seem to get settled, to grow my roots down.
I both love and hate this restless energy inside of me - it encourages me to keep propelling forwards, keep moving, exploring, reaching.
But I find I am always physically and emotionally exhausted by trying to discover this “home". What exactly am I running from, or searching for? It’s as if I’m constantly searching for a place or time that doesn’t exist and never did.
I’m continuously flooding all of my energy into trying to create this life I want to live, or feel like I’m “supposed” to live, trying to sculpt the person I’ve always wanted to be, and to some extent, I guess, the place I’ve always wanted to come home to.
Hiraeth: a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.
And who knows? Maybe home has never been a place, but a state of being instead. Maybe our purpose on this planet is to journey back and experience all the pain we’ve been dealt, disguised as different faces and bearing different names, so that we can morph them into something better. So that we can lay the foundations for the home we’ve either been struggling to return to, or the one we never had in the first place.
We all want to feel happiness and fulfilment, but that is also the paradox of our existence; once we attain whatever desire we are striving for, the feeling of contentment quickly dissipates and is replaced with a yearning for something more.
<3 Stay safe my alien d00dz
Akiramai x
