Straddling two worlds

So many things have happened to me in the short space of a few months. And they still keep happening. But only in one of my worlds.

I've moved away from home when I was 17, to study. For about 4 years I was stupidly studious: I did nothing but study, and did not in any way root myself in my new home. I did not even consider it a home. It was just temporary residence away from home.

But somehow, somewhere along the way, my "original" home - Kazakhstan - stopped being my home. At least my only home.

Thus, for the past few months I've felt like I've been living two different lives, somewhat of a fraud in each. This red string of fraudulence has manifested itself even before - when I was younger and felt that my private and public life were too rigidly separated. Only now that I find my home in two countries, the element of guilty performativity has been externalised and brought to the fore.

Lies, lies everywhere and every day. Lies to myself and to my family.

But I can't honestly call them lies anymore. Anais Nin has been one of my guides in life's travels and she would call these lies selfless benevolence. Sometimes we have to protect our loved ones from the things we know would hurt them.

Thoughts of confronting my family - or being confronted by them - are constantly swimming in my mind. Do I tell them? Do I just spill all of it and let them deal with, let them piece it all together, try to fit the sharp, jagged edges of this new information into the perfect, yet illusory, image they've constructed of me for the sake of their own peace of mind?

Many times I've answered that question with a "no" and at least as many times with a "yes."

How can I be myself around them while keeping so much from them? I feel guilty at the realisation that they might never get to know the person that I really am, and all because I've been too cowardly to let myself be judged and take the blows that come my way.

While I'm here, all happy in my lack of inhibitions, sadness strikes me sometimes.I feel lonely. If there's anything I'm proud of lately, it is that I've come to value my relationships where in the past I was too readily dismissive of them. But now that I want to invest into my relationships and be as close as possible to the people I love, I find a chasm that I cannot bridge. I'm hopping from waterlily to waterlily, never quite able to stay on one for too long and never able to settle on this or that edge of the pond.

Yes, I feel lonely. I feel separated from my family.

But I keep telling myself - we are all profoundly alone anyway. No matter how hard you try, you'll never get that sense of unity you long for. You're always going to be an inch away, never quite there.

In Hyperion Holderlin compares the impossibility of attaining unity with oneself and the world around to the similar predicament that lovers face: however close, they never lose their separateness. Not even physical intimacy grants such unity to lovers.

So what now?

Do I tell them? Or is it more important, for now, to craft my own self and differentiate myself from them before I can even dream of building a bridge?

That's a comforting thought. I think I'll end this here, for tonight.

More to come.