Hometown

Chicago is having another snowstorm again. I didn’t realize this until I got out of home this morning on my way to the gym. I made a smart choice to wait for the bus, instead of walking like last time. After got off the bus, I walked across the street, and damn, I fell down, completely, in the middle of the road. I was so glad there were no cars around. And no other people saw this. It was so embarrassing.

Back home, when it was snowing like this, I always put on ZARD’s winter collection “_ZARD BLEND II 〜LEAF & SNOW〜_“, and looking outside the big window of my room, merging myself into the peace of the world. It's the most perfect album for the weather, especially when it’s snowing. After came to the states, I almost forgot this habit. Now even if I don’t have the CD with me, I still play it on my laptop now. It’s less ideal, but it’s warm.

When I was walking home from the gym the other day, I was thinking, the life I’m enjoying, and the life I’m looking forward, are all the copies of my life in the half of the year before I came here. At that time, I biked to gym every day in the morning, and went to the grocery store next to it when I was done training. Even in Great Barrington last year, I always felt uncomfortable until I found the gym, Snap Fitness, with the grocery, Big Y, next to it, in Lee. Even if I had to walk 2 miles in the morning to the bus stop and spend 50 minutes on the road, I felt happy to train there, and visit the store before the returning bus arrived.

Now I’m in Chicago, and I felt great, because I can still go to the gym every day, and go to the grocery store on my way back afterwards. When I’m looking for new apartments in Hoboken to where I’m going to move, I tried to find the perfect neighborhood with, of course, a grocery store and a gym. I found it around Madison Street and 9th Street. It’s like the perfect corner, and I feel safe there. I thought, as long as there’s a gym and a grocery store next to it, my life is perfect. It’s this simple.

When my friend asked me why I don’t go home, for a moment I thought it’d be great — the gym was still there, and the grocery store was there too. If I went back, my perfect simple life will come back. But then I realized that I was wrong.

Nostalgia, or home sick, might not be related to the place itself; it’s more about the time we were missing about. I thought I miss my home, but in reality what I miss is the time. At that time, there’s no stress, only hope, as well as having fun with my family and my friends before departure. I could text my friend, and we would go out for shopping, or just hanging out. After these years, all my friends have their families, or have left Beijing. They wouldn’t have much time to spend with me. My two dogs were gone, too. My home now is only with my parents.

See? What I’m missing is that time when I was enjoying my simple life, with all my friends, all my beloved, around me. Without them, my home means little to me. There’s not much need to go back, therefore. We’re just constantly trying to rebuild our nostalgia in foreign lands. Not a place, but a time.

Like what I said to my friend the other day: my world is getting smaller and smaller. After high school, I was so excited to go to a college, and it was incredible to study and live in a high technology district in Beijing that’s so far from where I grew up. After college, I couldn’t stop thinking about living in the states, another place far from my country. Different environment, different languages, different people. The world just kept growing bigger and bigger, until the end of my grad school. Now the world stopped swelling and started shrinking quickly. Now my world is just myself alone, trying to rebuild those times where I felt the world could be infinite, with only some tangible elements I could grasp now.

Now it's playing ZARD's _あなたに帰りたい_ (Want to Go Back to You). It's not a specific person or place we want to go back to, I think. It's the time we want to go back to, but will never be able to.