I think everyone feels like an outsider in some aspects. No matter where you are, or who you are surrounded by, be it family or friends, the town you’ve lived in your whole life, or a brand new city, there is some part of you that is unknown to anyone but yourself, misunderstood or partially hidden. It doesn’t mean you aren’t exactly where you belong; instead, it should serve as a reminder of all of the beautiful multiplicities that are contained within each person. We have endless facets to our personhood, some of which are yet to be discovered even by ourselves. How can you expect to be fully seen, fully understood, by another person, when you see only certain aspects of others?
There’s a lot that goes into feeling like an outsider, and a lot of ways that hollow loneliness, no matter how small or large it is, nestles in your soul. It sits inside all of us, waxing and waning as we age, as we move around, as we lose and gain family and friends. I imagine it never really goes away.
Some people might define Home as where you are from – regardless of whether you feel comfortable, safe, and known there or not. I don’t think I can decide whether that is ultimately the meaning of home, because I have been lucky enough to feel all those things in the place I come from. But what is “home”? I believe we can have more than one place (literal or figurative) that feels like “home.” If asked, I would say my home is Alaska. This is because I have spent my entire life there, born and raised. And because my immediate family lives there. Even more specifically, home is the house my father bought in 1997 under the roof, my parents, siblings, and I all reside in. But home was also my late grandmother’s home in San José, now sold and remodeled beyond recognition. Not because I lived there, but because I knew there. I knew the walls, the rooms, the smells, the fruit trees in the yard, and even the neighborhood cat Chango who often wandered in her yard. I knew the people in the home, I always felt welcomed.
Now, I have come to Pittsburgh for university, and I have another “home.” A room filled with my belongings and friends who know me well and live all around. Places I couldn't picture six months ago now leave me longing for them when I am away. A person can also be home. Far away in France resides one of my best friends in the whole world, Alix. She is a person who understands me in ways no one else does.
And yet, in each place, I feel like an outsider at times. Trying to explain the foreign ways of life I practiced back in Alaska to the people I met in Pittsburgh is difficult, I often give up. But I have made friends here with whom I can discuss things I never could with my friends from back home. When I visited Alix in France this past summer, I often felt uncomfortable in her home and her country. So many things were so different from anything I knew. Whenever I am at “home”, I catch myself referring to Pittsburgh as home. Whenever I am in Pittsburgh, I think of Alaska and feel homesickness.
One day in the future, I will move somewhere, to a new city, in a new state, and rent an apartment. I will make new friends, and have a new place to call home. Maybe I’ll like this place so much that I buy a house, and start a family. Or maybe I’ll go somewhere new, and I will leave that home in my past like my grandmother’s home. It took leaving Home for me to learn the difference between feeling at home and being at home. I still get confused. But I do find truth in Roxanne Gay’s perspective, that, whether you feel claimed by it or not, your home is where you come from; where you have always known. Everyone has such a place. Maybe if you have enough people in your life who feel like home, then anywhere can be home. Maybe the purpose of life is just to try and find those people who make that outsider feeling go away, no matter where you are. To continuously find a Home within people, even if you technically have one already.
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