home

I wrote something cheesy on my flight back to California, 2 months ago, just to capture how I was feeling at the moment of leaving. Though extremely belated, I wanted to post it now, since, with my mom living in a new city, my current stay in Juarez, and my upcoming move to Korea, I'm feeling a bit discombobulated.

July 6, 2012 - While living in New York for the past 6 years, I clung to the idea of home as that place I was from to which I could always return. But I realize now how much my concept of home has been challenged and transformed. The home I found in New York was one where my community was based on choice, invention, and shared passion, rather than any idealized fantasy or circumstance of birth. My "immediate family members" were my amazing friends, by beautiful necessity, which opened up space for incredible new bonds. And my comfort zone was not something to be escaped as if it were bordered externally by fear, but celebrated as the capacity to find peace and strength in challenge, a capacity expanded from within through a deepening understanding and acceptance of myself.