The last ten days have been fun, hectic, distressing, exhausting, emotional and complete with unexpected events. This is becoming standard for my trips home…. funny that I continue to refer to Philly as home although I’ve lived in Paris for 3 years, a city that feels more like home to me. But this trip made me see the implicit truth behind the saying “you can never go home again”. Each time I return, something is different. Sometimes what has changed is tangible but mostly it is a feeling I have that my memory of life there is somehow altered or skewed. While it is natural to feel a permanent attachment to home, it does foster a sense of loss when what you remember from childhood begins to change and those memories are replaced with the realization that you have moved on and grown up.

My mom is in the process of fixing up the house I grew up in to sell and move into something smaller. Walking into the house felt like walking onto a construction site – possessions in boxes, wallpaper torn down, mirrors and wall hangings removed, and repairs in the works. I immediately felt a sense of anxiety upon realizing that this house, which symbolizes my existence up until 3 years ago, is a chapter of my life that is coming to a close.

As we must do with broken relationships and crumbling friendships, we must also grieve the loss of a traditional notion of “home” and an ever-growing distance from childhood innocence.

Arriving back in Paris, where I have an established home, routine and network, I feel nonetheless slightly uprooted and unnerved by the feeling of loss that I experienced for 10 days. I easily adapt into a routine when I’m in the US and just as quickly as I arrive and adjust, I readjust and fall back into my routine in France. To a certain extent my life is compartmentalized; breaking off into two separate realities, both very real while I’m living them. I know that it probably will never be possible to merge these two realities but it remains a source of distress, albeit mild. It’s true that if I were living somewhere in the US I may have similar sentiments regarding my hometown but the dichotomy between the US and France creates a hyper-awareness to the sacrifices and choices I have made thus far in my life. I want to be there, I want to be here and yet somehow I’m not fully anchored in either location.

So I’m back to one of my lives and am hopefully on the path to accepting this duality as my reality.