A few days back I found myself sitting down and listening to a guided meditation about taking a mind’s vacation. It kept telling me to think back to a place which made me feel happy and calm, and all I could think of was the view from my old balcony – which overlooked the Karachi port. Then it started telling me to picture how the place may have changed since I was last there. It probably changed a lot, mostly because we don’t live there anymore.
Over the course of this summer, my family moved from Karachi, Pakistan to California (dropping me in Boston on the way) – and I said goodbye to the place I called my home for over a decade. It’s not as simple as moving within the same country because when I go back, I have to have a pretty good reason to do so since it’s about ten thousand miles away and it costs a little over two thousand dollars.
Which means all the people I left behind may be the people I never get to see again. These farewells were especially heavy, heavier than the ones that I said when I left for college, because we just didn’t know anymore. There was so much uncertainty, so many memories that were laced with those goodbyes – it was like a true farewell to my past. A goodbye to the time when I was hit in the forehead by a cricket ball and a goodbye to all the hell that high-school brought to us. A goodbye to all of those summers we spent there and everywhere else.
It’s hard to say goodbye to people from home because they grew up with you. They are the people who kind of really know who you are. They were there when your art project from the fifth grade got messed up, and they stopped you from crying. They were there when you got your first college rejection letter and your first acceptance letter. They were there for (most of) your birthdays. You guys watched each other grow up.
So because of that, it’s really difficult to let go of home. Because home is more than where you sleep at night and where all of your stuff is. It’s a place you can call your own, a place where you feel like you belong. You may carve your way into a new home somewhere else, but a piece of your heart will always be calling for the place you grew up in.
I’ll always miss Karachi, just as a lot of people will always miss the place they call home when they can’t go back anymore.