universe in exile.

The pull of exile doesn’t always announce itself with a passport stamp, or a farewell party, or a drive to an airport, or a landing on the other side of the world. Though, we will talk about this particular exile in the future. For me, it emerges from, ironically, childhood memories, one displacement atop another until we arrive to today. Was it at six, when we traded our city apartment for a suburban house that felt like a foreign land, giant trees surrounding everyone and everything? Definitely a house too big for just the three of us. I did find solace in the gorgeous view of the night sky from my balcony. Or maybe, the first school switch, where I first met loneliness, bullying, not belonging, skipping lunches because this is how foreign I felt. “Home” was always a concept rather than a place.

But if I trace it back further, the true inception might lie in that “double life” I led from age four to eighteen, a life my mother dreamed for me more vividly than I ever did. She wanted nothing more than for me to become a ballerina (or rather brag about me saying “my daughter is a ballerina”) (now she brags that I work at United Nations so, I guess I haven’t failed her, yet.) So, mornings blurred into elementary school routines: scribbled homework, playground chatter, the ordinary hum of childhood. But afternoons? They belonged to the harsh and long hours of ballet classes, until evening swallowed the day. Wake up at 6 a.m., home by 10 p.m., try to rush homework in the middle. Belonging to neither worlds, I allowed my mind to escape into literature during the breaks, when I usually was slacking off from doing homework. I’d huddle in corners with books, escaping to whatever world I felt like belonging that day.

It was the best and worst of both worlds: the art taught me resilience, and I don’t think I would have such strong discipline if I was raised in any other way. Yet it demanded my everything; time, energy, pieces of my soul I didn’t know I had to give. By seventeen, I no longer had anything else. Yet the demands kept coming. Quitting wasn’t out of rebellion or spite. I saw a miserable young girl in that mirror. And I felt sorry for her. I stepped into another exile, but at least this was something of my own making.

Displacement isn’t always about maps; it’s about the spaces between who we were and who we are becoming. Literature became my anchor then, and it still is. Even in exile, we can find belonging in words. This world is so cruel and harsh to its inhabitants of any kind. But particularly harsh to the conscious beings that spend what feels like an eternity, spent thinking. It mesmerizes you with it’s beauty, and society pulls you into a false sense of security and safety. But we are weak in our unbelonging. A world that inherently rejects you. The challenges are never ending, and under the all encompassing blue sky, it’s so easy to feel like a spec of dust. Nothing more, maybe even less.

But we still try our best. We are all sailors in our own sense. Sailing to find a place to belong, to anchor, to rest a little, and continue our journey in the harsh unforgiving seas. You can rest here a bit. I’m not sure if you will find the belonging you are searching for here, but I promise it will always be welcoming.