2025-03-22 ・・・ blairstown, ann arbor, new york, tokyo, pittsburgh, home

i'm not entirely sure why i am writing this. but after moving again, it just felt right to express my thoughts on home and location.

it's almost been 8 years since i graduated high school, about 4 years since i graduated college, 3 since i started dating my fiancé and working my first big-boy job, almost 2 since i quit and left to japan with him, almost 1 since we returned to the united states again, and only 3 weeks since we moved to pittsburgh together.

a common theme i have felt, despite all of these phases and moves, waxing and waning in intensity, is a sense of physical unease or feeling out of place in my own existence.

a japanese word that stuck with me that describes this feeling is 違和感 iwakan, which corresponds character by character to something like wrong peace feeling or incorrect harmony emotion. a lot of japanese people mention this word when they are confronted with a foreigner who possesses almost native-level fluency in japanese. a general feeling like, who the hell is this and what are they doing here???

this feeling is confusing enough on its own, but what made me even more confused about it, was comparing where i was when it felt strongest and when it felt weakest.

one point it was at its strongest, whether i was conscious of it or not, was in high school.

i grew up in the woods, where the nearest mall or movie theatre or bus station was at least 30-45 minutes away. like many in small town america, i had acquaintences i grew up with that died from drug overdoses, had children before graduating high school, never boarded a plane, lived in degrading houses while sharing rooms with 3 siblings. my upbringing was quite privileged and i felt a bit guilty about this even as a young child, but my first experiences seeing just how vast this gap in the united states is, was in my private high school.

i went to high school with children of foreign royalty, business moguls, and political figures. this was in the same town where a drug epidemic was killing kids because they saw no way to escape.

i also happened to be one of the few kids in the area who grew up queer. this was post-2008-election cross burnings type of red country; the attitude towards any minority can be easily inferred. unlike the very few black or asian or latin kids in the area, i could at least hide it, but that only transmits the pain in a different way rather than sparing me it.

unconsciously, all of these contrasts between the people i was forced to ingratiate myself with, and the person who i had swallowed up to survive, created a great deal of mental distress within me. i had no concept of the cruelty of one's circumstances yet however, and i thought this feeling within me was just an issue of my own to overcome. like i was behind or lesser because i just hadn't "got it" yet.

the second point it felt strongest, was when i worked in new york city after college.

i was in a sales engineer type of position, writing machine learning solutions designed to convince clients to buy software. in reality, i rarely had to do anything. i would message my manager for any tasks to do or assignments i could help with, receiving no answer and wondering when i would inevitably be fired. eventually, i just stopped even paging my boss when i would go out to a doctor's appointment or similar, because i knew nothing would ever be waiting for me.

from this salary, i could comfortably afford a $2500 monthly rent, and i paid this exorbitant rent for probably the shittiest, most depressing apartment i ever lived in, all because my job ordered us to attend hybrid work, only to reverse this decision a couple months later.

walking out my door, i could be met by muttering mentally ill homeless people bearing open wounds. the next moment, ostentatiously wealthy strangers could strut by wearing over $100k worth in clothing and accessories. perpetually empty penthouses worth over $100m stood silent in the sky, looming over these interactions, which multipled into thousands due to sheer population density.

days went by as i made six figures, doing literally nothing for it, witnessing all of this. a dream job on paper, but it ate at me. it wasn't how i felt life should be; i wasn't earning anything that i deserved. the poor people living on the street suffered through lives they never deserved either. how could this make any sense?

this sort of situation is deeply upsetting to acknowledge, but it seemed like everyone was so unaffected. it drove me insane. how could i make this much money doing nothing simply because of the circumstances i had been born into, yet people were dying on the streets in front of me? more importantly, why was no one with the power to change this, doing something?

instead of clinging to the shred of hope that morality existed in our system, it made me finally consciously accept how cruel and cold this place was at its core, systematically.

the period in which this feeling became almost absent, was somewhere in late fall/early winter while i was living in japan. i had just become comfortable speaking japanese and fully 100% settled into a routine and a rhythm for life there. i knew my favorite spots, felt challenged in my day-to-day, and had security in my existence.

not only that, but i could actually pinpoint a moment where this uneasiness was actually replaced by peace, for the first time in my life. we were on a days-long biking trip in 四国, taking in the scenes and changing of the seasons in the 瀬戸内海, and all i could think about was how this was the freest i had ever felt. sitting in a countryside island overlooking the sea, eating citrus snacks and breathing salty air, making conversation with locals, walking around with no hurry at all.

there is a lot of cultural nuance that foreigners just don't understand while living in japan. it's said so much it's practically like a meme at this point, but it's true. at my best, i could just barely speak like a middle schooler. i had my boyfriend thankfully, but i didn't have any family, nor friends, nor acquaintances there upon first arriving. i will always be viewed as an outsider and have fewer legal rights to boot.

but still, this feeling i had never experienced before, a sense of comfort and center, had welled up inside of me.

why was it that this faraway place in asia made me feel most comfortable in my skin?

as presumptuous as it is to say for someone who has lived there one year, i simply feel more alignment with the cultural values and practices of japan than that of the united states. people cared for the spaces they lived and participated in. respect for each other was a given, not a privilege determined by money. it didn't feel like every transaction was a scam by systematic design. people pursued passions entirely divorced from the concept of creating a side hustle. infrastructure was created to make life easy, low stress, and cost-effective. people-first design wasn't just a marketing ploy.

the city goverment even directly deposited $700 worth into our bank accounts, twice, with no questions asked as an anti-inflationary measure. if it were the united states, i would've tucked it away and ran with it, but in japan i felt almost excited to find opportunities to circulate this money back into japanese peoples' lives by going to local restaurants, cafes, and the like.

even as a student from a foreign land, i felt more cared for, supported, and looked after than i ever did in my home country. providing care and support for its citizens was codified into the law of the land, executed nationwide by numerous people and processes.

it was from this experience that i came to understand the interplay between the unspoken morals and values of a place, and the psychology of the people that live there. and from there, it made me think about the concept of home.

sometimes i wonder if maybe i cannot come to function in the usa as effectively as i did in japan because i lived in japan on easy mode, so to speak. the only real obligation i had to do was go to class for a few hours a day, learning something i loved. everyone can do that pretty easily, right? i also didn't have to act japanese or conform to japanese standards. i didn't have to be subjected to the brutal hours working overtime 残業 or stifling 縦社会 societal structure like the average japanese person.

but on the other side, when life in america is so focused on surviving death by a thousand cuts, and squeezing every last productive second of your mental energy and every cent in your wallet for someone else's profit, is it really so hard to imagine why participating is so alienating and disembodying?

like many others have said, maybe the cruelty is the point. and i cannot pretend to identify with cruelty.

i guess the main thread of this whole long-winded blurb is thinking about home. it's a bit jarring and dissonant to feel like what should be home, is not.

since moving abroad, it occurred to me that home is rather arbitrary.

culturally, i do not fit in the united states as of now. i would rather be out-of-place physically and home mentally, than vice versa. and exploring other places in the world reinforced this further.

perhaps defining home as anything physical is misguided. a belarusian friend mentioned to me being able to find something that becomes a feeling of home for him everywhere he has gone, even places where he did not know the language nor had legal rights as a gay person. he mentioned that being queer lends itself to finding a little slice of community almost anywhere you go, due to the shared struggle.

there exists a chance of finding a small slice of home here. moving to pittsburgh so far has been calming and peaceful. i've been fortunate to come into contact with a rare american city that, by and large, seems people-focused. the people care about the people, and the people do things for themselves and each other. there's plenty of initiatives, events, and programming to back this up, but it's apparent even just talking to people in idle conversation.

but even as i am now in pittsburgh, a wonderful place in its own right, there still exists this deep-rooted feeling of disembodiment and detachment from the greater whole of where i am. i find myself wanting to be engaged with a local community here more than i ever have. yet, a disagreement with the state of the greater whole is festering in me, despite being in the midst of a localized feeling of ease.

so then, is this what home is?

i enjoy this place so far. it's fun, filled with interesting people, and life is set up well. but i still don't come close to the airy, harmonious, calm feeling i had in japan. my chest feels tight and my body on edge, and emotion no longer flows in and out of me naturally anymore.

in a way, it reminds me of my adolescence, and i feel a lot of empathy for those around me because of it. speaking from personal experience, it's stifling and claustrophobic knowing the area you're allowed to feel comfortable in has a bold line defining where it begins and where it ends.

how can one cope when the scope and size of home is a city? i have friends born in hong kong that can not legally live outside of a single city. and friends that have never lived outside of their parents' houses in blairstown.

what about if it's just one room, like those of the mercy of their circumstances finally getting to close their bedroom door and let their guard down?

it feels sad to ponder mentally how small the area of effect is for comfort and ease here sometimes. watching people function in their suburban homes, locked away from each other with no community spaces or identification with anything greater besides political grifters or sports teams or religious fanaticism, reminds me of watching caged animals at the zoo.

i don't mean to be a downer. finding home is a thing worth fighting for, but it's sad to think some of us have to fight so hard to even stand a chance of finding it.