I haven't written here in almost a month. Several people have been asking me why.. I'm not too sure why I have been avoiding this blog but I think it is because I am afraid to confront my own feelings about my experiences here over the last month.
Over the past year, I have been experiencing growing pains. All the difficult questions of life have been hitting be one by one and I feel as though I don't have any of the answers. Coming here and experiencing this lifestyle has only heightened my anxiety. These are just first-world problems - I know that, but in the context of my life, they are definitive.
I was born in India to a middle class family with rural and traditional roots. My parents walked 3-4 km through farms just to get to school, my dad studied under streetlights...you get the idea. Imagine the paradigm shift when that same family ends up living in a Canadian suburb. This has had several implications.
First, it has put me in this perpetual in-between state. I am not at ease with my cousins in India or am I at ease singing to Avril Lavigne songs in a bar. Sometimes I wish I was more connected to my past and at times, I want to forget it entirely. My roots teach me humility but also breed ignorance. Maintaining this constant balance is just exhausting and sends me on emotional roller coasters that no one quite understands.
When I chose to study Political Science at Western, I swayed towards my Canadian upbringing. I am still working to regain balance by stretching my comfort zone to accomodate my new lifestyle. Here I am now, conducting research in the Middle East, where my background makes me even more of a black sheep. I am left to reconcile with this worldly community of international students, all raised among families of diplomats or doctors for whom the expatriate life is not only natural but fulfilling. I, however, feel like a simpleton among these people, one that cannot even make the switch from sanitary napkins to tampons without leaving blood all over the bathroom floor.
I am passionate about the issues, but not this lifestyle. I wonder when I will be able to reconcile this relationship. Is there even a community out there that I can fit into?
I fear that my ambitions are costing me my relationship with my family. My parents have left behind everything to give me a lifestyle in which I have the luxury to care about the world, to be independent and void of social pressures that might confine me to marriage or beauty. So how do I appreciate this sacrifice and live it out fully without alienating them or leaving them behind? How do I travel the world but still give them company at the dinner table? Am I being a feminist by focusing on my career or am I being selfish? If only they knew how much I worried about them and how much I question whether I am making them proud of their little girl.
It feels as though I am motioning modernity when I have been destined for tradition since my very birth.
How do I make my mother, my professor, my friends, and myself happy? How do I pick up all the little pieces of my childhood without disturbing the puzzle I worked so hard to put together?
No one told me that growing up was this hard. Everyday, we try to reconcile our past with our future and something important always gets left behind, something always gets lost.
Where is home for me?
Over the past year, I have been experiencing growing pains. All the difficult questions of life have been hitting be one by one and I feel as though I don't have any of the answers. Coming here and experiencing this lifestyle has only heightened my anxiety. These are just first-world problems - I know that, but in the context of my life, they are definitive.
I was born in India to a middle class family with rural and traditional roots. My parents walked 3-4 km through farms just to get to school, my dad studied under streetlights...you get the idea. Imagine the paradigm shift when that same family ends up living in a Canadian suburb. This has had several implications.
First, it has put me in this perpetual in-between state. I am not at ease with my cousins in India or am I at ease singing to Avril Lavigne songs in a bar. Sometimes I wish I was more connected to my past and at times, I want to forget it entirely. My roots teach me humility but also breed ignorance. Maintaining this constant balance is just exhausting and sends me on emotional roller coasters that no one quite understands.
When I chose to study Political Science at Western, I swayed towards my Canadian upbringing. I am still working to regain balance by stretching my comfort zone to accomodate my new lifestyle. Here I am now, conducting research in the Middle East, where my background makes me even more of a black sheep. I am left to reconcile with this worldly community of international students, all raised among families of diplomats or doctors for whom the expatriate life is not only natural but fulfilling. I, however, feel like a simpleton among these people, one that cannot even make the switch from sanitary napkins to tampons without leaving blood all over the bathroom floor.
I am passionate about the issues, but not this lifestyle. I wonder when I will be able to reconcile this relationship. Is there even a community out there that I can fit into?
I fear that my ambitions are costing me my relationship with my family. My parents have left behind everything to give me a lifestyle in which I have the luxury to care about the world, to be independent and void of social pressures that might confine me to marriage or beauty. So how do I appreciate this sacrifice and live it out fully without alienating them or leaving them behind? How do I travel the world but still give them company at the dinner table? Am I being a feminist by focusing on my career or am I being selfish? If only they knew how much I worried about them and how much I question whether I am making them proud of their little girl.
It feels as though I am motioning modernity when I have been destined for tradition since my very birth.
How do I make my mother, my professor, my friends, and myself happy? How do I pick up all the little pieces of my childhood without disturbing the puzzle I worked so hard to put together?
No one told me that growing up was this hard. Everyday, we try to reconcile our past with our future and something important always gets left behind, something always gets lost.
Where is home for me?
