Having lived in two countries, Daniela De Vera feels homesick.
Where is home?
Although I was born and raised in the Philippines until the pivotal age of seven, every time my family and I visit, it always feels a bit strange. I have never been able to articulate nor pinpoint this exact feeling. Perhaps it’s nostalgia, or rather a sense of grief, or maybe in better words – displacement?
This out-of-body experience occurs partly because I can’t seem to define or locate where home is. Is it where I was born? Where I was raised? Where I am now? The people who have brought me to now? The ones who I love? But the people I love are in two different countries, separated by an eight-and-a-half-hour flight. So then, which one is it?
Throughout these trips, there would be reunions of friends who I played Patintero and Chinese Garter with on the streets after school and before dinner, though their faces are hardly familiar and their names have become too small of a fragment to scavenge for in my mind. We would visit relatives with smiles and wet cheeks, then, upon seeing me, they approach with uncertainty, speak with uncertainty and ask Mama of the certainty of my comprehension of their Tagalog. We would drive past places that were imperative to my early moments of life, but these scenes of experience and place would only trigger a handful of memories that would spill through the cracks in between my fingers as I fumble to grasp them.
But you know, every time we bid farewell to our family and friends, I still tear up and wish that the holiday went for longer. And when we board the plane, and land in Sydney, and take an Uber back, I question – is this home? Am I going back home? Is this my home away from home or is the Philippines my home away from home? Do I call it home because of the automaticity of my actions and the familiarity of my words? Do I call my homeland my home since my roots are there and my inherent values and beliefs originate from there?
It’s quite funny actually, because I’m in Central Courtyard writing this in the food court and the song Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros is playing – that part where they sing “Home is wherever I’m with you.”
Anyways.
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