PIECES ALL OVER

I moved from my country of birth just before turning one, to what was almost the other side of the world. I then moved again, this time across the Tasman Sea, before the age of ten. Every time I left a place, a small portion of me remained. I was attached to each piece by a fine thread.

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With no family, few friends, and no real connection to the places I moved to, it was difficult to ever feel truly at home. It was as if I was always waiting at the departure gate for my boarding group to be called so I could finally fly home. Where that home was though, remained unknown. Perhaps, it was where I was born.

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Wherever I went, I never let myself become too comfortable. I packed light, secondhand clothes, a childhood teddy bear, a laptop, and my phone. All my photos were online, easily transportable from one location to the next.

I waited at the departure terminal. Two years became five, which then became twelve. But still, I waited. Bags packed, ready to leave at any time. Only one friend to leave behind, no pets, and no extended family.

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Yet, my boarding group was still not called, and the departure board remained blank.

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I made more friends.

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I went to high school.

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I graduated.

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I folded my clothes and put them away in my closet.

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I changed the way I spoke to fit in.

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I watched the TV shows everyone else my age was watching.

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I began to lose my accent.

 

People would ask,

 

“Do you like it better here or in America?”

 

All I could do was smile and laugh.

 

“I like them both, the weather here is always so all over the place though.” I tried to change the subject.

 

I bleached my hair and straightened it.

 

I tanned.

 

I wore the clothes everyone else wore.

 

I did my make-up like everyone else did theirs.

 

All the pieces of me, scattered across the places I had been and held on to so tightly by the fine threads that connected them to me, grew harder and harder to grasp.

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Without even realizing it, they had begun to slip away. The accent I had tried so hard to keep was fading. The vowels I spoke became lazier. It no longer tied me to where I was born. I had no memories of Oak Park or Chicago to hold on to. The only thing that connected me to that place now was my birth certificate and passport. After my maternal grandparents died, it felt like I had completely lost touch with the piece they had kept safe for me until I could come back and get it myself.

 

My second home, where I had spent my first seven years of life, slipped away too. With every passing day, it grew more difficult to remember our house, the layout of the garden or what the chicken coop looked like. I forgot the names of the young children, around my age at the time, who lived down the street. My grasp on the few memories I still had grew tighter. The days spent playing in the mud, my pink gumboots by the front door, sunny days spent under the shade of the magnolia tree, holding my pet bantam in my arms, all seemed so very long ago.

 

It was like scooping up salty ocean water with my hands. The water leaked from between my fingers. The harder I tried to contain it within my fist, the more of it dripped out to rejoin the frothy waves that lapped at my feet and shins. All I was left with was a thin layer of salty residue on my palms.

 

The stack of journals filled with my hopes, dreams, and desires to return to a place I could truly call home stopped growing. As they began to collect dust, I tucked them away somewhere they would not take up so much space.

 

I went to university.

 

I dated.

 

I made plans here.

 

I became afraid.

 

Afraid that if I ever went back to the country where I was born, it would not feel like home. I would be an outsider, with a strange foreign accent.

 

I could not go back to New Zealand either, the house had been sold long ago and all the places I once knew had been destroyed

by the earthquake.

 

It now feels like I have no past or present. My future is undetermined.

 

How can someone bear to exist in this limbo forever, with no home and little family left?

 

I had broken into a million pieces that scattered all over the floor. The wind then picked them up to scatter them far and wide. They came to rest in all the places where I had been before. All that was left was the container that they once had filled, now empty, with no strings attached.

 

I stand, still staring up at the departure board.