transition is the bane of life.

Does it ever really go away? The feeling that you are still adjusting, still transitioning to this place? It is hard. Hard because everything around you is good, the places are ever becoming more familiar, the people that you love more dear, and you are being grafted into community. It is all so wonderful that guilt rises up in you just after the feeling that you don't quite belong here, the feeling of being called somewhere else, a sudden remembrance of a distant haunt. You begin to feel belonging here, but you are afraid. Afraid that allowing yourself to indulge fully will tear the delicate fabric that attaches you to everywhere you've ever called home. And yet, you are afraid not to indulge. You see people laughing at a good joke, carrying on a deep conversation over breakfast, and you desperately want to immerse yourself in their world. But you have a world of your own, a world that screams for your fidelity. A world that recalls to mind the smells and sounds of the markets, the myriad of colours, of spring rains, summer greens, autumn sunsets and winter skies. A world of many tongues and points of view. But you want THIS world, the world before your eyes, the one with which you daily interact with now. You hunger for those good conversations, you want to make those memories that we will laugh about years from now. And you want to be able to keep your own world, keep it locked away, to take out when you are alone, but not now, not with other people, who do not know or care about this or that place. And so you try, you try to talk, to interact, to become like them. And you think you can, because you are a master of identities, but when you open your mouth, your world leaps off your tongue, because what is natural for you is still there. And then you feel ashamed that you have mentioned something that they cannot relate to. You hope that they saw you, saw what you have been through, and not an upturned nose that you never intended. And when you take your shoes off at the door instead of leaving them on, when you eat your meals a certain way, when you try not to give them blank stares when they talk about sports or popular culture or colloquialisms that are in English but carry no meaning to your ears, your world seeps through your flesh like vapor, and everyone can see a glimpse of a different world than theirs. Ever so desperately you ache for authenticity, while trying to hide behind a man that you have concocted to look like them. You are afraid of being thought of as someone who is attempting to be better than everyone, someone who looks down on people, brags about what he has done, what he has seen, where he has been. And this you hope they will never see. So it's always a dance, a dance between who you are, and who you are trying to be, a confusing and chaotic complication of characteristics. 

And all you want is authenticity. All you want is to be authentic.