THE NEW ABNORMAL BY SHENGXIANG GAO

The New Abnormal BY SHENGXIANG GAO

The wood crackles as the orange flame dances over it, illuminating the darkness and keeping the cold at bay. Aside from the fire, the room is filled with chatter, jokes, bursts of laughter. Grandparents to grandsons sink into their cozy couches around the fire, after a homemade meal where everyone had plenty. That was my idea of home, or what I always wanted home to be. In reality, the image of home is much more obscure. Moving from house to house, family to family, back and forth across the Pacific during my quest to learn distorted what used to be a crystal-clear picture of what home meant in my earliest memories: My mother, my grandparents, plates full of steaming hot dumplings and a television broadcasting special programming on a Chinese New Year. Not long after, home became a smaller apartment where I always failed to stay up and outlast the night, waiting until the moment Mom returned from her late hours. Solitude became a synonym of a word that was supposed to provide me shelter, and school suddenly felt more like home than the two-bedroom apartment ever did. When I arrived in Maryland for school, home became a humble bedroom in a strange house within a distant country. I would return after school each day to spend time with my feelings and thoughts, my only true friends. I was used to being alone, but when I inevitably wiped off my tears on the pillow beneath me, I was shattered. The year after, I moved to a different house, but home remained a corner of my own. Strangely, the more time I spent alone, the more peace I was able to find within solitude. The summer after my sophomore year, my mom got remarried. There was no wedding, but with my stepdad she was the happiest I have ever seen her. They went to the movies, had romantic dinners, did things she had not done for fifteen years. She finally felt alive, and home has meant something completely different to me since then. I was one step closer to the fire, one step closer to those cozy couches. Home then became a tiny school in Vermont, where along with 44 other kids who chose to be here, we spent a spring semester in the mountains, free from the shackles of our old lives and technology. There, amongst the seemingly endless blizzards and the leafless yet vigorous forests; during the 76 days spent crying and laughing with the ten boys in the dorm; and under the countless, iridescent stars decorating the night sky, I found me. Or rather, a piece of me that longed for this, a piece of me that appreciates the good and the bad within the journey. A piece that, under the warm aura of home, I would never have found. Now, home means a room in the basement at my friend’s place. A room not much different from the ones before. Every now and then I ascend from the underground, take my skateboard with me just to ride around the neighborhood, enjoying the sunlight with nothing but music and the wind in my face as company. Looking back, every stop I made in the search for home has shaped me into a slightly different person than before. The more I move, somehow, I feel less lonely and more at ease. Maybe I am used to solitude, but moreso, home has started to mean something different for me. Sure, I still long for the fire and warmth, but instead of a place to return to, it has become a journey. The places I have been to have helped me piece together an inner sanctuary unique to myself. Though I am far away from home, I am closer to it than ever.

My Grandparents DRAWING BY PETER QIU