When two worlds become one, I'm home (a reflection on an immigrant story)

I wake up each day to the noise around me.

It’s typical Rishikesh.

There’s the early morning construction noise. The honking of the cars and auto rickshaws. The loud music blasting no matter what time of day. I arrived in this city in late December, just in time for the New Year holiday. Since then, the level of noise and chaos around me hardly changed.

I’ve been living a life of a mountain nomad for almost 7 years now. Being alone in a place full of crowds, noise and chaos isn’t anything new. In the early years of my being a full-time global nomad, I deemed the scene enthralling as an observer. At times, I even found myself engaging in them. But as I aged while the years went by as a global mountain nomad, I started to crave silence more. The slowness. The solitude. The emptiness of a place. The stillness of everything around me sustained my soul.

If I’m being honest, these days, the noise, the people and the merriment more often than not cause me to feel loneliness whereas silence and emptiness are the key foundation of my connectedness to myself and the world - there’s nothing lonely at all about being by myself in the middle of nowhere with no people, no noise, no merriment.

For that reason, my stay in Rishikesh challenges me. It takes my mind to places I may have avoided subconsciously for certain reasons. It takes me back to the noise of my childhood growing up in the crowded city of Manila where life, as I recall, was difficult for my family. My parents struggled to support four children. My father was the only breadwinner and every cent he brought home went towards the sustenance of the family, no more, no less. There were no vacations except to see our grandparents. Forget big birthday parties or receiving gifts. Their four children’s future looked bleak - the very reason my parents decided to move the family to the U.S.

But can I tell you what I think about this?

Despite the hard life we experienced in Manila, it was the most I have ever felt at home. The first 13 years of my life being there felt perfectly imperfect for someone who truly felt like she belonged - to her family, her friends, her community and her birthplace, the Philippines.

Once my family came to the U.S., in Washington state to be exact, in November of 1990, my parents arrived with a sense of optimism and hope, believing fully that the decision they made was the right one while in my 13 year old mind, it was the most devastating decision they ever made. I was too young to appreciate then the sacrifice that my parents made for the sake of us having financially secure lives. We had to come to America.

We had to.

When I look back at this decision now at an age nearing 50, I can only thank my parents for what they’ve done. The life in America for us was far from feeling like a success. Family bonds broke down, financially becoming secure and yet totally disconnected from the family that once felt like my true home. For the most part, our lives focused on survival.

But is survival the success everyone talks about in America? Is survival the very meaning behind the so-called “American dream?” Becoming a lawyer was my parents’ dream and mine although as time went it became clear to me I had a dream that was unfulfilled and it only became known when I discovered the outdoors. The origin of Brown Gal Trekker emanated from my love of hiking and the mountains. At some point in time, it was a choice between “survival” and a “dream.” I wanted to strive for more amidst the fear that gripped me for so long. In 2017, when my mom died, my determination to dream finally overcame my will to survive. I didn’t want to just survive like always. I wanted to go for my dream and be happy as one should in America or any place in the world.

As I grew older, it became clear that the decision to leave the Philippines was my parents decision alone. I had no say in it. I was taken away from the only home I knew at the age of 13. And to a 13 year old, it was heartbreaking to lose friends, relatives and an older brother behind. I cried at the airport in Manila as I held my friends and relatives in my arms, knowing in my bones that my life would never be the same again. I was going to lose these people as soon as I let them go from my embrace. I cried myself to sleep in the first few years of my life in Seattle. To this day, I still quietly tear up when I think about that first few years of my life in the U.S. - here in Rishikesh.

If I’m being honest, my first heart break in life had nothing to do with a boy or a crush. It had everything to do with saying goodbye to the first 13 years of my life…

It was about saying goodbye to that family home on San Judas Tadeo Street in Paranaque, Manila.

It was about saying goodbye to my best friends who I lost contact with soon after I came to America.

It was saying goodbye to all my relatives that I hardly saw again in my adult life.

It was saying goodbye to my oldest brother that I failed to get to know growing up because of the distance that migrating to the U.S. carved between us.

It was saying goodbye to a country that made me feel a sense of belonging through the warmth of the people and the culture that nurtured my identity and perceptions of the world.

It was saying goodbye to that young version of me - even today it feels as if I lost her forever.

We always talk about the American dream but we hardly ever talk about the heartbreak that comes with being an immigrant - of the life we have to give up so we can survive and find a sense of belonging in a world that has yet to truly value and love diversity.

I always wondered,

How can we just talk about one side of the immigrant experience and not the other? But then, that’s America - it thrives on one-sided narratives that are often fueled politically, which makes immigrants feel invisible and unheard. In this case, America remains strong on perpetuating the idea of the “American dream” as if it’s flawless.

As an immigrant, I know damn well that’s far from the truth.

At the same time, I now know that my becoming a nomad and leaving America in 2017 is somehow my way of healing this heartbreak that I have carried inside of me all the time I was living in America. Will I ever heal? I have moved on but it still aches to think about the “what could have been” with the loved ones and friends I left behind. And as I near the age of 50, I look back and can only think to myself, “Those people I left behind meant the world to me.” Losing them is the biggest price I paid to become an immigrant and live a “privilege” life in America.

Moving to America is bittersweet when you had a life you once loved before you came to know America. And I’ve carried that with me since the moment I left the Philippines - a part of the immigrant experience that remains unexplored, unsaid and unseen in mainstream America.

On the other hand, I feel blessed to live in two worlds. Neither one wants to let me go no matter how long I’ve been away from either one. And maybe that alone is what makes me the luckiest woman on earth as having two places to call home has given me a wider view of the world. A deeper understanding of humanity. A fuller heart because I love two countries, not one. A bigger home because I came to realize I can live in any place on earth and just be one thing - I can be me, this time by choice.

By becoming a global nomad, my two conflicting worlds became one. Now, I’m home.