return.

In the past two years, I have moved fives times. Two were intended- a move to a rental after selling my house of nine years and to a new country for my PhD. COVID took me from the cheapest islands in the European Union to the residences of my father and my childhood home for a few months. I knew these addresses were temporary as my final destination would be the home of tsunami for the foreseeable future. I would like to say it has been a struggle adjusting to my role of chaser in my god touch relationship but I do not adopt the idea that my gender also means I am the one that needs to be rescued or sought out.

I took the book of the Alchemist as a variant of an individual with a god-touched quest and in most of the elements, it is that. It is simplified but at the core of it, the main character is compelled to seek out financial wealth and bring it back to the love of his life at some point. My quest mirrors a different aspect of a romance. As the Sleeper, I have been leading tsunami on a merry chase every time I chose to leave the country for a year or two. I never succeeded in the length of my stays but I did receive mail in these locations for a period and being able to stay that long resonated.

Looking back, I have never been one that would be a typical Disney princess as they have been interpreted. I openly admired the spunk and willing sacrifice of Belle and the moxie of Ariel to seek a way to walk on dry land after her father ruined her private collection of human items. When one looks at the classic princesses, they gloss over the actions of the princesses in the Golden Era of Disney and focus on the early princesses that were slept and woken with the kiss of a prince that did not ask for consent. But I always looked at Jasmine for her willingness to rebel against the title and restrictions of being a princess and the slow adaptation of Belle in the prisoner space.

In my own romantic relationship, I had to repeat what I started for myself- leave my home state. I left my home for the houses around my best friend during my high school years, the halls of college as allotted during my college career, and for my own residences once my name was on a payroll. I left my city long enough to know it was not home yet financially it was all I thought I could afford. I mentioned in previous essays that it was the admission of a known rapist to the highest role in the judicial system which made my disgust with the former commander in chief and the movers and shakers in politics choice to turn a blind eye on the social implications of these open sexual assualters in public service positions made me, a Black woman more unsafe walking down the streets of my home country.

I look at my travels to another country as a retreat from the US of A. I openly acknowledge that corruption is practiced in every community in some capacity. I walked around my host country and witnessed casual corruption in the banking systems within each village. I enjoyed the cheeky way this was accepted by most of the residence as commonplace and was saddened that this complicitness also permitted domestic violence to run unchecked in the sleepy towns surrounding the island. As a resident of one sleepy fishing village, I overheard the screaming matches and hope the sounds of flesh meeting flesh were covered by the hourly fireworks. It is nothing so emotionally crippling to be in a country where the culture and language barriers hinder me from calling on the authorities. i regret not getting the number for the police and simotaniously glad to not need it.

But to be in this relationship, I needed to cleanse my emotional palate in what my place of residence is moving forward. It has been my choice to live in the home I purchased, my choice to sell it and move to another country and my choice to move to another state at the end of 2020 for this relationship to exist as needed. In a way, the pleasure to have these choices as mine are powerful to me and single me enjoys making decisions that only impact me. That is one joy single people take for granted in some capacity or are told to ignore by coupled people that are not afforded the same pleasures regularly. Alas, with this relationship, there is no return to single me. And in a lot of ways, no returning to my home city or any other location without tsunami with me.

It is not an uncomfortable idea to not return to my home city for me. As a Black woman from the States, returning to my genetic country of origin is not available to me. Being a product of slavery, the culture and history and stories of my bloodline’s deities has been lost to me. And for the time members of my culture have been enslaved in a literal and figurative capacity, returning home in the way white people demand of POCs is not available to me. This is not solely a problem to me but in my opinion my whole culture in this stolen country. We are not African in the way my classmates from college are or my tsunami for his country. We as Black people have no familial root in our native countries to tie us to the place our blood originates from. Knowing that is a cultural hurt that often is not acknowledged in this generation as we strive against systemic racism, looking for remnats of our cultural hybrids among the Western colonization practices.

I would find this act of cultural overlap or absorbption distasteful if it were not common in all other countries the soft power of my passport affords. I could look askance at this eagerness to impress or incorporate the products and practices of the oppressor in other countries but in the US of A, I look at it as one of the few models of success offered as examples to POCs misplaced in this stolen space.

For tsunami, he can go back to his home country and has last decade. He is afforded this opportunity to visit while I, in addition to other reasons, can not take the chance. My home country is not safe for me as a American citizen, a woman that is not married to a man that shares my skin tone or physical features, and for the first glimpse of me making the citizens of that country question my inability to articulate myself in more than one verbal currency. It bothers me that English is the language afforded me and any opportunity to obtain another will take more time and energy than learning French or Spainsh- two languages that are spoken in the countries boarding America.

I could lambast America’s decision to keep its citizens in a monolingual status despite being open to over a dozen different languages and cultures but then, I give England the the same side eye. But the benefit of different dialects is lost on many people that speak a common language and there is often not encouragement to obtain more for the mere benefit of cultural access. I loathe that. And hope not to let the daily struggle of maintain basics continues to rob me of time to acquire a second language for me, and eventually, my family.

Nationally, I will not be able to return to my home city anymore. It is not as if my times away did not change my city or my family’s response to my excuraions to find a different way of observing the city to know that I have evolved from my home spaces. Making ‘home’ any place I need is something I have acquired from my childhood housing insecurity. That skillset does not factor in my emotional state in some ways. Despite being a home owner for almost a decade, the fear of losing it to foreclosure ensured it never became a comfort. Much like a child, I looked at my home as a temporary state. I will have to approach raising my child in the same mental- enjoy them at their current age and let them go when they are ready to take their own place in their America.

But not being able to return to my home state is not something I have to take to my emotional cemetery. Like my dorm room, it was a temporary space that served me well in developing my skills as an adult, observe what is means to be a parent and a self sufficient employee. And eventually, tsunami’s city will show me how to develop and work on a healthy, romantic relationship.

Well. As soon as we are in place to begin this thing.