Home or away?

Here I am back from three blissful weeks at home. And right now all I want is to be back in Aizawl with my family. I miss the utter peacefulness of falling asleep next to my mother (yes, I confess I still sleep with my mom when I can). Seeing baby Jonathan's beautiful smile first thing in the morning, the perfect satisfaction of holding his little body close and taking in his baby smell. The never-ending talk and laughter with my sisters. The warmth of sitting around with friends and neighbors, drinking tea, watching LPS Muay Thai competition on TV...

There is nothing, absolutely nothing in this world that makes life more worth living than these!

Yet, despite all of these, something in me always wants to get out when I'm there. There's something there that makes me feel oppressed and 'chained up'. Maybe because there are no challenges that excite me, and I feel like the rest of the world closes up when I'm there and if I stay, I would be subjecting myself to a life of living out the rest of my existence in a tiny box where I can't breathe.

And there are little things I hate. Like how if straight hair is in, it just is not acceptable to have hair that blasphemously dares to curl in a messy mop around one's head even if that was the way God made your hair.

And how well you dress matters way too much, and how people judge you continuously on unimportant things - like how you wear your hair and what clothes you wear.

Or how that girl you grew up with who doesn't work who is married to someone who doesn't work who she have two kids with (who obviously don't work) is constantly being compared with you and she is always the bigger achiever because she is now married and have kids while you are disappointingly still childless and without a marriage certificate.

Or how they don't understand at all if your priorities are different from the priorities of the general population and dear daughter, neighbor girl, distant relative - listen to us! You must bend and change your ways and stay home like a good girl and get married and have kids whose education you'll never be able to afford because you don't know the right people and because you don't have relatives in high places, all the work you'll most likely get is in a private school where you'll earn Rs 3500 a month teaching kids that this is Cat, that is a mat, the cat sat on a mat, it is a fat cat, this is a bag, these are bags, the bag is on the table, there are Kuhvas inside the bag, there is a box of Khaini near the bag...

And I feel cursed and wretched because I can't stay there but everything I love and hold dear and close to my heart all belong there...

And you know how they always tell you how homesickness and the constant missing gets better with time? Well, that's a damned lie! I've lived away from home for more than ten years now, and there is not a single time that I don't shed a tear when I have to leave.

So I'm stuck here, unsure what to do, where to live. If only I had a private jet! That might make things easier...