It is difficult to live in two places at once.
Today back in JB, at midnight after everyone has gone to sleep, I start packing for KL. I open my little drawer and filter through the polaroids I want to bring back with me to KL, and as I do that the memories captured in the photographs rush back at me. I see myself happy and smiling in these photographs and wonder, sadly, where all that has gone. I deliberate which ones to take up to KL, weighing the risks and advantages. Will I use these in KL? Will it bring more benefit to me if I leave it here or if I bring it up? What if I lose it? It is so hard to decide sometimes.
As if the photographs weren't enough, I rummaged through several other belongings. It was as if the photographs have triggered a spark which led to a series of actions that I couldn't stop. I was looking for my polaroid stickers which I couldn't find, so I started hunting. Through other drawers, crammed full of things from my past. I say past as though it was a long time ago, but in reality it has been less than two years. Yellow sports day ribbon for sports day, big frame lenseless glasses for my emcee stint on teachers day. Various name tags from YLDPs and teenstreet, letters from juniors addressed to "corporal Choong". A piece of paper with team-building games planning instructions. Presents from my mentors at Jeremiah school. I am not sure if this is the general trend, but when faced with the past I tend to cringe inwardly and my instinct tells me to run away. To forget the memory. The past makes my emotions go numb, i stare blankly at my things. I suppose its a coping mechanism.
In the study room I continue hunting for my polaroid stickers. They are nowhere to be found. I search at the bookshelf which houses my art supplies, and I feel regretful that so many things have been left there unused. I reminisce the times where patterned paper, stamps, and art tools were all I ever wanted to buy during book fairs. I miss the times where I used to stay up at night making cards for my friends. Again I contemplate bringing some of these up to KL. Already I have a modest selection of paper and supplies in my shared apartment there. A pang of regret waves over me as I realise that my art supplies are not together, they are not complete. They will never be because I live in two places at once. I spy some hair clips on top of the shelf. Dust has settled around them and on top of them. I die a little inwardly to know that they have been so neglected. Leaving my art supplies where they were, I feel as though I have left a part of me behind.
Back at bed I still have not found my polaroid stickers and I wonder if I will ever find them. It will be difficult to know where they are because I have my things scattered over two places. Again I reflect upon the frustration of living in two places. I am not usually so nostalgic, most days in KL I get along busy and fine. I have no time to think about these things and I do not miss home. But back at home with nothing to do I cannot help but lament upon this grievance. Many a times I open my cupboard and discover I have nothing to wear because my best clothes are in KL. In KL I often borrow Rachel's clothes as well, because I get bored of wearing my own clothes and my mother's endless clothes supply is in JB. The cards I make for people in KL can never be comparable to those which I make in JB; I have more tools here. Sometimes I feel that I should throw away all the keepsakes and junk that I keep because of their sentimental value, then I wouldn't crave a certain necklace or a certain photo when I am in either house. But I cannot bring myself to do so; these are so much a part of me.
I don't spend too much time in JB anymore. This place is like a vacation house more than anything to me now. I come back but am unable to resume normal life, as it was before I went up to KL. Favourite restaurants have closed, friends have moved on. The weekend is now Friday to saturday instead of saturday to Sunday. The city itself is changing. The JB I come back to is no longer the JB I once knew. It is home, but not really. I could say the same for KL. The only way I can cope with the lack of personal space, plus the lack of control over my environment is to reduce the apartment to a "temporary setup". So it is not home either. Yet I identify with the vibrant city and the increasingly familiar roads; my heartbeat echoes the pulse of the city.
I contemplate bringing all my stuff up to KL, since I spend mose of my time there anyway, but I can't. Sharing a tiny apartment with four others mean that I will not have space to put my stuff. The last thing I want for my belongings is to be misplaced. Also when I come back to JB I also actually want to come back to a place I can call home, and home means familiarity and belongings. I cannot bring myself to displace so much of things from a home I now identify less and less with to another more temporary home.
Nine more months and I finish IB. Perhaps I will be able to move home then? My belongings will all be in one place; I suspect though that it will be different. A great part of me will always be left in KL, the memories and experiences that i have gained there. and I will again lament on how, whenever I visit that it is not the same anymore.
And then in another year, tentatively, I will possibly fly off to the US. Four years away from home. Will home even be the same anymore?
I recognise that this may just be the delayed effect, after one year, of homesickness. Yet I think that its much more than that too. It is difficult to live in two places at once, yet that is exactly what God had planned for me to do. I suspect this is just training, just the beginning. Maybe its not about living in two places at once, maybe its about not being able to find a place to truly call home. Maybe it's about having " nowhere to lay my head".
I spy my old study table, made partially inaccesable my a clothes rack. Old books, ballet CDs and colour pencils line the shelves sparsely. On the table are two stacks on airplane modeling kits that don't belong to me.
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