Home.

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Home, a gateway into both ancestral and religious philosophies, tied to cultural ideals that are profoundly engrained. This tangled web from the past influences the lens with which I’m seen. Home foreshadows a rejection I’m almost certain to face, creating a disruptive tension within myself. A relentless back-and-forth demanding I maintain the balance between who I should be, and who I am. Home, despite my efforts, is the battlefield where I’m insistently fractured by failed attempts to satisfy expectations.

Home attempts to construct my individuality by denying the broader context where it exists. It fails to comprehend the nuanced intersections of my identity that will inevitably collide. Home attempts to regulate the way I interact with the world, and assumes it understands the way the world will interact with me. Home regards me as many things, from one-dimensional to intolerable. A liability at attempts to attaining a delusional state of familial perfection, perceived through the veil of antiquated and fixed intolerances. I’m an outcast. Home draws comparisons against me that erode my sense of character. I scramble to juggle whatever fragments of myself remain, to create a being that is complete.

Yet, despite these woeful deficiencies, there is nowhere else more reliable. Home is structurally sound, firmly rooted, and unwavering, regardless of what arduous contest awaits. Home has offered a shelter for every calamity, a warm embrace for every heartbreak, and an uninhibited love for every burden I carry. Home may struggle in absolute vehemence to grasp the intricacies and reality of my being, but it concedes, in the end, that I am welcome.

by Karim Zayn.

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