Some relationships just end. Like a star, they burn bright and brilliant, and then nothing in particular goes wrong, they just reach their end. They burn out.

- Cora Carmack

Some relationships just end. Like a star, they burn bright and brilliant, and then nothing in particular goes wrong, they just reach their end. They burn out.

- Cora Carmack

Moving

So it's 2.31 in the morning and I'm lying in my new bed in my old/new apartment. 

Yes, we moved. Again.

Even though my family hasn't moved all over the world or 5 times across half of it, it gets pretty taxing. 

It's pretty much common knowledge that Third Culture Kids (TCKs) don't know where home is. I thought I had all that sorted until my parents decided to move back to Singapore from Suzhou, China. And at that time, I'd already moved back from China to Singapore, shuttling between my grandma's flat and my room in hall. So when they came back, my grandma's flat was as crowded as an illegal squalor while they worked on renovating the apartment we stayed in before we moved to China. 

Okay yes I get that it's pretty confusing. But I had thought of our place in Suzhou as my home - where High school had been and the best years of my life were spent. When they came back, we had to give up our house in Suzhou (it was rented - yeah, no.1 sign that it couldn't have really been home) aaaaaaand that was that. A few weeks ago I was looking up cheap tickets during class (Scoot had this crazy $24 dollar sale) and found that tickets to China and back were only SGD$100. I thought about going there and then I realised that I didn't even have my house to go back to, no room to return to and no comfy bed to crawl back into. And then it hit me - was Suzhou not home anymore?

Of course, it didn't help that every time I or anyone from the Class of 2012 went back it felt more and more foreign: we weren't the ones prancing around in school like we owned it. In fact we felt like the odd ones out, the ones no one knew and no one cared about. The places we loved to go to still exist, but the people changed every time we were there. Teachers we knew started leaving the school and every time we went back, it was always a different bunch of people there. Everyone had changed and grown up from high school. No matter how foreign it was starting to get, it was still my home. It was hard to call Singapore home after having been gone for so long.

Now in Singapore we're moving about trying to fit back in it and trying to set everything up again. But it feels so wrong and I'm tired. Tired of trying to make places feel like home and tired of trying to get used to all these huge changes. 

I wish I knew where home was. 

Jamie

 

So this is Jamie, my Bichon Frise pup who's sleeping on her furry grey mat as I type this. 

Sometimes I wonder how everything around her looks like from her point of view. If everything out there is overwhelmingly large. If  she's happy where she is with my family and I or if she'd rather explore the huge world alone (or perhaps with other doggy friends). If she feels like a prisoner where she is, maybe?

She never fails to put a smile on my face and coming back home to her and her wagging tail has got to be one of the best things in the world. 

Even though I constantly complain that ever since my family moved back to Singapore, the apartment is tons smaller and that you can't walk 2 steps without meeting someone, I'm kinda' glad. It also pretty much means you can't walk 2 steps without bumping into Jamie who'll do everything she can to get your attention - either by lying on your feet (on, not by), dropping her orange bone by your feet so you'd throw it for her to fetch or by following you everywhere you go for the next 10 minutes. 

I love the times when I'd sit on the floor after a long, long day next to the powerpoint plug where my phone's charging and she'd scurry over to climb in my lap and snuggle there. As well as the times when you're sitting next to her and she casually gets up and gives you a few licks on your leg like you've done something great that deserves 5 gold stars even though all you've done that day is ignore her. 

So this makes me wonder if they have emotions and feelings just like we do. I know she's happy when we come through the door. I know she's disappointed when we stop playing fetch with her after a while. I know she's surprised when I tiptoe to next to her while she's sleeping and scare her when she opens her eyes. I know she's ecstatic when we say the magic word "walk". 

I do wish though, that I'd know if she loves me.

I will go on exchange

"I don't believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be."

Ken Venturi

 

A wanderer

Rays