Embracing Change | When Home No Longer Feels Like Home

Have you ever felt that home no longer feels like home?

I had.

Last spring, I was waiting at the arrival hall, waiting for my parents to pick me up from the airport and while standing there, in the middle of people who are busily moving around I couldn’t help feeling a bit lost. The sort feeling that I don’t belong here. It was weird because just from my tanned skin and all blue matching T-shirt and head scarves, I look perfectly like a normal Malay race Malaysian.

What has went wrong?

Do my years in Japan changed me so much that I no longer felt at home in my own country?

To be honest, I don’t think my years in Japan change me much. Well, at least physically. Okay, fine maybe a little weight gain thanks to kaizen 100yen plate sushi and Washoku Sato’s tendon set. But I do admit that my inside has undergone a tremendous change. I was no longer shy and dislike being outside of comfort zone 19 years old self that I was before.

I have changed.

But change is inevitable in a process of reaching adulthood and personally, I think that even if I didn’t get the chance studying overseas and went to the local college instead, the feeling that home is no longer feels like home would still happen. Albeit, at a much smaller scale. Maybe hometown. Did I make sense lol?

Being away from home and entering college, you’re going to leave everything behind and gradually all the things you felt familiar about will remain as memories.

‘I remembered that restaurant. Their food is delicious.’

‘Oh, look! It’s the bowling place we used to go after school is over.’

‘Where did the pisang goreng Auntie’s stall went to?’

Riding around the hometown especially would bring out these kinds of nostalgic memories and the tidbits of familiarity around is comforting but as we are changing so does the place we called our home. But I guess home is still home when I see familiar faces that I could rely on.

My parents, families and friends.

For the two of us, home isn’t a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.”
STEPHANIE PERKINS, ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS