if you are an immigrant then you might know this feeling. when I go home to cape verde there is a moment where I wish (against reason) that I could throw up my arms around my island and hug it tight to my heart. usually that happens when the plane lands. it lands in this nook of the island, fully surrounded by mountains, where the airport is. it’s a corner that is drenched in the two-toned color scheme that defines the place for me: deep reddish clay, bare mountains and electric blue sky. it is like these two brown hands of land are joined, cupping the bluest air, waiting for me and my plane to come. short of hugging the entire island of sao vicente which is impossible, I just reach down and touch the ground. I don’t kiss it because that is what jean paul the second used to do and that would look weird, but I always want to—I always almost do. but even just the motion does the trick. the ground is always very hot, the energy from it to me, always palpable that way. there is also a smell—fresh sea smell I would call it. the whole thing is but 20 seconds but they matter so much these seconds of touching the ground. last night they said in the news that homesickness is a real disease. that it can be sometimes; times where it gets so bad that little kids can’t function, won’t eat, won’t sleep. I don’t know if that meant this only applied to children. in cape verdean there is a word for homesickness and longing, called sodade. it is the central motif of a great deal of our artistic expression; typical for an immigrant people from an island place. disease or not, existing in a foreign place is stressful particularly in times, like right now, where the bonds to that foreign place are seeming more and more tenuous. I am pretty sure this is not a real crisis but a predictable psychological response: I don’t think I’m truly desperately homesick and lost here. I just think I’m lost and thus self-suggested myself into homesickness. It is after all, a legitimate disease for people like me to suffer from and lately, as I continue to wake up in states of the utmost profound sadness, I keep looking for legitimating narratives, as a social worker might say. I thought I was done feeling self-conscious about what I feel. clearly not. I know that I can’t go home, firstly because it wouldn’t be a good move for my son. My son could not survive such a drastic change in his life right now and I could not shoulder helping him through yet another, in this case, super traumatic “adjustment.” and I couldn’t take him from his father, regardless of what challenges their relationship currently faces. but being here is not making any sense either and I don’t feel that I can continue much longer in my neither here nor there state. I did not envision a time I would not be anchored in my relationship with him writ large, if not my relationship conceived specifically. I am unable to let go simply because I am unable. I feel unequipped for being alone in the world, and I feel the world is very vast and very foreign and not my own right now. and before, right or wrong, I was part of something and I had a family and I was becoming part of this place but now, everything is slipping away. and I feel completely dislocated and out of references and markers for what the hell I am doing. everyone underestimates everything: they underestimate how much I am struggling, how sad I am, how often I cry, how long this’s been going on, what fundamental weight it all bears and how much I just want him back. how much I’d rather not have things be this way. how much in fact, I am only judging by degree of distress; how much I am concluding that if it feels this bad then it must not be for the better. I don’t make an effort to correct anybody’s underestimations either—here we go back to my sense that there are expectations and rules and parameters for what I can and cannot wish or want or do. the difference is that in the past I would harbor along with the shame for (still) wanting him back, a regret that I wasn’t in fact, this strong self-sufficient woman who would not, in fact want him back. in the past I would be the self-admitted loser. this time, not even. I don’t aspire to a sense of resolve or closure I don’t have. sure, I’d rather not be suffering, but that’s subtly different from my saying “I’d rather not want him back.” I just do. It is a fact. If it is a result of confusion, panic, lack of common sense, maturity, etc, I can’t know. I won’t know. I can only sit with my own feelings. still, he won’t even talk to me. I could take that to mean that this then, is settled, irrespective of what I want/wish for. and if it is, again, the question arises: what the hell it is that I am doing here, in my life, at this particular time, in this place? and the answer feels like it would be “nothing”. and if that’s the case then I should go home. part of it is because this turn of events makes no sense to me. part of it is because I would like to run away, of course, but moms can’t “run away”. but part of it is just because home is a place where at least you don’t have to have a reason to be in order to be; at home you are simply expected to be. and you belong, no matter what. and if you lose your way, you can also reach down and touch ground. you always know what you are doing when you’re home. and if you don’t, that’s fine: you could stay there until you figure it out.
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