Closeted

Have you ever missed a place you're not sure exist?

I have, and I still do, ever so often.

This sentiment is known as sehnsucht, part of its definition on wikipedia goes like that:

"It is sometimes felt as a longing for a far-off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify. Furthermore there is something in the experience which suggests this far-off country is very familiar and indicative of what we might otherwise call "home"... ...But the majority of people who experience it are not conscious of what or who the longed for object may be, and the longing is of such profundity and intensity that the subject may immediately be only aware of the emotion itself and not cognizant that there is a something longed for."

I find it fascinating that I'm not the only one who felt this way. It had seemed like such an absurd emotion, and no one else around me felt this way.

Though I said "a place you're not sure exist", for me it has always been the United States of America. I often wonder if this phenomena is a result of me being exposed to American music and novels growing up, but it clearly started off as an unconscious preference.

I'm born and raised in a tiny island country called Singapore in the middle of Southeast Asia, which is on the other side of the world from America. I grew up amidst tall flats and tiny man-made parks and fields. My family is very Chinese - is there even such a description? They're Mandarin-speaking and generally prefer Chinese entertainment.

As a child, I got my music from the radio and books from the library. It never crossed my mind to check what the country of origin of the songs or novels was. I only know the language is English, yet I gravitated naturally towards American works. I only realized this bias when I got older.

The songs and the movie scenes that send such a severe pang of yearning in me, they're mostly set in America. As a Singaporean, there's no reason for me to feel for lonely freeways surrounded by wilderness; suburban houses with that beautiful glow in the sky at sunset; or that country tune and nostalgic yellow sunshine, but I do. It almost makes me embarrassed to admit it, because I feel like an impostor, being in love with something that was never in my life.

So it created in me a conflict. I love my family, but something huge is missing from my life. As I write this post, I feel a pang, much like homesickness. Should I pursue this unreasonable homesickness, I might learn that home is where I'm born and bred in, not a place born out of imagination. Or I might learn that there's something more to the concept of home. Until then, I'm left to wonder.