I spent a week trying to figure out if I fit in after I came back from India. The reality for me is that I will never know how I would’ve done over there, and if it were to be any better than how I’ve done here. But throughout my time there I knew for certain that Sydney is home. The alienation that I felt here was apparent and the fact that I still feel somewhat as though I don’t fit in anymore is still a lingering thought and is somewhat shit but being around family, friends and experiencing a whole support network that was unknown to me before allowed gives me all the motivation I need.

There is nothing like being here. The fact that the people that were so apart of your life before, have somehow moved on are all reasons as to why I do love being back. It hurts but it’s a fact of life. The pace of everything here is so fast that they days pass in minutes and before you know it your in university studying something that you never thought you would. Not to say that the lifestyle is slow in India, quite the contrary everything moves so quickly, but here we are able to move in a much more positive direction than the many unfortunate people over there.

I learnt so many new things about not only other people and the culture but about myself, and I don’t care how cheesy that sounds. The specific traits and habits that I thought that I only did, I in fact share with a large group of cousins, uncles and aunties. Yes living on a farm for more than a week was tough but what made it the best was the fact that I could hang with my two youngest cousins, help my aunty cook and spend time with my old granddad who had about more stories to tell then he had teeth. I stopped caring about all the negativity that was around me while I was there and focused on all the people that made me happy in the last year and made it my mission to make sure I did the same for them, that I would work on my relationships with those specific people because they are worth it.

And then came the confusing part…I had to ask myself, where was home. Was it a place that I visited every couple of years, where my blood had been brought up through dozens of generations in the soil of Kerala. Or was home where I was born and raised, where all my friends were, amongst the comforts of a Western lifestyle, a place that had caused me endless happiness but surrounded me with pain as soon as something went wrong.

In the end I decided that home is where my dog is. Truthfully as stupid as that sounds it made sense. Roman is my responsibility; from the day he came into our lives and everyday since. And that’s where home is; it’s where you carry yourself with everything that you’ve learnt and how you act with that knowledge in your day-to-day life. You see its not up to us to feel comfortable all the time, we have to take the good with the bad and realise that life is worth living only when you choose to do something with it. And that is totally up to you. We have to live life with some sort of responsibility, not only to ourselves but the people around us, to make sure that we do what is needed so that we add some sort of value to this world. And that’s what makes home, home is where we are and who we are, we make our home in how we live our lives and that is what’s important…us.

Back there I was happy and comfortable because I was surrounded by endless love and compassion. Times are tough but my family made me feel welcomed. And they might not always be there, but that’s ok because that’s life.

And in my life here my family and friends will come and go on with their lives because that’s what’s important to them, even as sad as that sounds, but what I choose to do with my life, whether I choose to stay or go is where I can find solace, its where I can find home.