The solution for homesickness is not to move home. What if you don't have a CHOICE? Why isn't the solution to homesickness is to stick it out?
Okay, I feel homesick. I acknowledge the feelings of homesickness. It's not a "cry every night" feeling, but it's just a little feeling that pops us sometimes when I'm reminded of things that are happening at home, and it's nagging. I don't want to go home, though. I want to be able to stick it out and at least finish my degree. I don't want to come home. #defiant I want to be able to say I stuck it out and successfully moved away from home.
Reasons I don't want to go to singapore in the near future:
1. I don't have anything to do there. The last time I went I just spent all my time sleeping or being on the internet and generally feeling like a waste of space because doing my assigned essays wasn't going too well. I got sick and lost my voice and spent days just moping at home and shivering and feeling really sad. It was the kind of flu that gives you a high fever, and getting up gives you a headache, and getting dressed and out of my pajamas was a hard task. I wasn't even making any progress on my essays, and so I felt like shit. I didn't do any of that social stuff that I had planned to do, because I was sleeping due to jetlag, and was justifying it because I needed to work on my essays, which I didn't do anyway.
I spent the time feeling sorry for myself because I wasn't in the prestigious universities that my classmates were in. It was stressful because it was holiday season, and I was supposed to go out and meet family, which meant my maternal aunts and uncles and the paternal side of the family. I'm always stressed out when I meet family because my mum always used to compare me to so-and-so, and tries to answer the questions I get asked. I don't know how to behave because I get treated like a kid, when I'm so used to talking to everyone else of their age as equals. I don't get treated like an equal. I have the feeling that all my relatives are looking down on me because I'm in a shit university doing a shit degree and I don't have myself pulled together. They all have careers-- are lawyers, doctors, accountants, and here I am doing anthropology, having no idea what I'm going to do after I graduate.
I was stressed out because I was living with my family, and when you do that after three months of living alone, it's not something you get used to. I'm constantly reminded that I'm part of something bigger when my grandfather keeps walking in to the room he shares with me (the room I sleep in is his study as well). My mum keeps nagging at me, and I had to get used to living at home. Getting used to living in your own home! Imagine. I liked having people around, though, and I missed tita, and I got to hang around with her a lot, which was good. I missed the security guard and I missed having my sister around, so that was the upside of living at home.
It's not. I don't think the home in singapore will ever feel the same way it used to. I didn't feel like a complete stranger, but I did feel out of place. I don't even know if I can handle living there long-term again because it's so weird. It's nice, not having to pay rent, and having people to eat with at dinner, and being able to be around my grandparents. I like my grandparents. They are quiet people, aren't too judgemental, they try to be as supportive as they can, which I really appreciate. I don't know-- dare I say this-- that I will be able to stay sane living there, though. Having my own room here in london and being able to bring people home was something I missed while in singapore. Also I think there isn't space for me. My sister needs her own room; my grandfather needs his room. Sometimes I felt I was bothering my grandfather too much when I was staying there.
This is something I've said to my therapist, and I know this sounds weird, but I'd like to bring girls (or guys) or whoever home in the future, just like my uncle did. To my three-year-old self, he would bring a different girl home every weekend. haha. Sometimes the girl would have dinner with us. It's just a weird feeling. My parents or grandparents don't even have to like her. They just have to pretend they do, for a couple hours. I would like to be able to bring a girl home should I meet a girl that I'd like to bring home. I just want that option to be available to me.
I want to show my grandparents and parents that "hey, this is my life, and she means a lot to me, and I'd like you to get to know her." I want to tell my grandfather that this girl makes me happy, and she contributes to my quality of life and I love her. I want to have that girl sit with me at dinner and see how crazy my grandmother is and see the absurdity that is my grandparent's relationship with each other. My grandfather jokingly makes fun of my grandmother, and they have arguments over which drug (all legal, they take so many it's funny) to take or what's going on in the news. My grandmother is losing her hearing and a bit of her mind, so she gets a little crazy and likes telling the stories about how she survived WWII and things I should do. Maybe I'll even bring her to dinner with my grandaunts for funsies. (They like having people over and they ask lots of questions and talk a lot and sometimes ask if I have a boyfriend.)
I don't know if that ever will be possible, though. Oh well.
I don't think I have a family like chloe does, though. I don't know. In recent years I've never brought my friends home. I didn't have a boyfriend or girlfriend that I wanted to bring home, so I don't know how my family would react to my friends. OH now I remember. That time I brought my dad to see martina and lidewij was weird because he kept trying to say things and he was very perfunctory and I didn't say much. Mostly my dad did the talking. On hindsight, he was very open to the idea of meeting people he didn't know at all, and he was so nice to come with me, even though I sprung it on him last minute, and he was so okay with me going to Breda alone.
I can't change the way my family is, and I don't think I want things to be different. It's just a weird experience to encounter an american family (which I'd never encountered before) and to feel so welcome in someone's home. Chloe's mum, too, even though I've only kind of spoken to her once on skype, is so friendly and nice. I really should meet people's parents more. I have such a skewed perception of them. I've met avariel's parents. They were nice singaporean parents. haha I don't know how to describe it but the culture is different. They're a little like my parents in that they don't get too involved in what their kids are doing; they check in periodically to see if we're okay or not. They acknowledge and accept avariel's obsession with the LHC and other space-related stuff and leave her to it. Like my parents, how they acknowledge my obsession with harry potter and reading and just accept that I am a nerd. Well not really. My dad said I had no social life once and I got so mad that I got up and left the restaurant we were eating at. But that's a long story.
With singaporean parents, you're taught to be very polite, so you are, and they are polite back. They're nice to you and offer you tons of food (I remember this with felicia's parents) but they generally leave their kid and their friends alone. They just stay out of the room or out of the way for the time that you are with your friend, and you never see them unless to say hi or goodbye or thank you. With chloe's dad, it was different. I watched doctor who with them, ate ice cream with them, had dinner with them while her dad engaged me in conversation. I even got to feed chloe's little brother pancakes, which I thought was a privilege haha. So I guess that's how singaporean and pacific northwestern parents are different.