Outside, Los Angeles bathed itself in a warm honey light. The palm trees undulated gently above the Spanish-style homes of my neighborhood, as families began to stir and come to life. Their voices punctuated the occasional hum of garage doors opening. 

This is Californian life!

But inside the office of our new unfurnished home, my mom and I sat behind closed curtains. Not a single ray of sun cared to peep in. This was our fourth day in LA, and the distance between our new home and our old home in Shanghai seemed to grow by the moment.  

I told my mom that I had been sitting alone at lunch. Somehow, the words slipped out of me casually, like the way I used to tell her everything back at home. I suppose I had accidentally or intentionally forgotten that life now was different, foreign.

Hearing this, tears seeped through her sunken eyes and squirmed weakly down her scrawny cheeks. A redness spread across her face like a virus, and she began to shake.

It broke me.

I instinctively hugged her, feeling her boiling hot body, which I used to take comfort from, grow smaller and smaller. Her hair no longer had the scent of the Korean shampoo she used back at home or the floral perfume she used to happily put on. All that was left of her was the smell of hair and skin.

As she told me about her homesickness, her overwhelming list of tasks, and her guilt of not being strong enough to support us through the move, I cried, but silently. I couldn’t let her know that I was crying, because she was getting smaller and smaller.

This is Californian life too, the one behind closed curtains.

Ironically, our move was meant to be a fresh start, an escape from our mundane life—a ripple in the still waters. But little did we know that it was a large wave in disguise, a never-ending tug-of-war between moving forward and looking back.

Ever since we moved, my mom had been crying a lot. Sometimes she would hide it. Other times, she was too weak to do so, but my younger brother and I were always by her side. On top of all the hardships I faced during the move, I also carry the weight of my mother’s.

I watched my mom break down and cry, shake and curl herself into a little ball on the floor. I watched her lose her appetite for food and joy. I watched her scream that she wished she never had kids. The mountain of tasks she was facing was too much for her to handle on her own—my dad stayed behind in Shanghai for work. 

On the day of his leave, he drove me to my fourth day of school. I hugged him, but not tightly. I stared at him, but not for long. I cried, but not too much. In his hauntingly usual easygoing voice, he told me to stay strong, take care of my mom, and that “All was right.”

All was right until I looked back and realized he had driven away. The tears I’ve been holding back gushed out like the blood of a new wound.  Reluctantly, I hauled my legs forward, forward, forward—hovering in a funny little space between continuing with my day and running back to his arms.

I continued with my day, or rather, acted it out. I sat down for yoga class and adorned my tear-streaked face with a smile, arching my eyes into a joyful curve to make it more realistic. No one seemed to sense that anything was wrong. Like usual, we rolled out our mats and lay down. I waited for the shuffling to cease, for everyone to lie down so all they could see was the ceiling. Silence.

I let out my tears, my body convulsing to keep them muted, until the shuffling began. This was my cue to smile.

I cried a lot thinking about an entire world of loved people, culture, and familiarity I had left behind, stuffed away frantically and fruitlessly in the shadows of my new life. When I lie sleepless in bed, when I am home alone on dusky evenings, when I stare at the frozen photos of family and friends, when I go on walks on streets I cannot even name, when I finish an episode of Stranger Things and slump into the sofa—when I am alone, and the world has gone quiet, a certain blue foams my body until it leaks out of my eyes as tears. 

I had very carefully avoided labeling my life in Shanghai my “past life” and my life in LA my “present life” because I was living them both, simultaneously—haunted and amazed, blessed and cursed, and trapped in a wayward space in between, unable to fully live them both.

I had hoped friendship would bridge the space, but the truth is, I haven’t made any close friends yet. For now, I have small talks with friendly girls and say hi to familiar faces. In the first month of school, at times when I wasn’t invited to sit with someone, I’d bring my heated sandwich and Chobani yogurt to the tables outside the Commons and eat alone. I scolded myself silently for ending up like this as the empty tables around me began filling up with laughing and chatting friends. I used to have friends like this. If they were here, we’d be snorting- from laughing too hard, or complaining about a teacher, or fighting about a crush we made too obvious, or confiding about how hard life has been. 

The everyday loneliness was soon woven into a cultural loneliness—juggling two cultures but not fully fitting into either. Unlike my eleven-year-old brother, who may one day call himself a Chinese American, my cultural identity feels mostly fixed. Although I admire the kindness, confidence, and open-mindedness of Americans, I struggle to have something to relate to, whether that is a pop culture reference or a joke I did not understand but nonetheless laughed stiffly along.

On a particularly strange day at school, after not having a conversation with anyone yet, crying in the morning from homesickness, and a mild binge eating episode, I stared at the bathroom mirror. The reflection of my puffy face stared back, judgmentally and softly.

I want to go home. 

Home. It’s a funny word, right? Is it the one twenty minutes away from school or the one 6,500 miles away in Shanghai? A month ago, I would have said Shanghai, but this time, I thought for a while. My mom was in the one twenty minutes away, cutting up pieces of fruits for my brother and me to eat after school. The same home was furnished now with furniture, family photos, vintage decors, cozy lamps, clothes lying in random corners, and cabinets full of snacks. This used to be how home in Shanghai was like.

Home is a funny word.

The reflection smiled knowingly and vanished.

It was a Wednesday at about 12:00 p.m.—in the middle of class, in the middle of the week, and in the middle of the day. 

I am in the middle, like so many others who took a risk and moved somewhere foreign.

Our lives are fraught dualities—of escape and entrapment, of being connected and alone, of building a new home and mourning for our old one, of assimilating to a new culture and preserving our own culture, of walking forward and glancing back at what was left behind, and of living two lives that both comfort and unsettle us.

But now, I am beginning to see beauty in this duality—in the strength, hope, wisdom, and resilience it is nurturing within me, in teaching me to cherish the past and shakily embrace the present, and in the richness of life that comes from living between two worlds.

Although my dad remains far away—too far for me to hug—I can still hug my mom and brother, and they too can hug me. Everyday, we remind each other that things will get better, and when they aren’t, we have each other to lean on.  

My homesickness comes like rain.  No matter how heavy or long it is or how gloomy it makes me feel, it’ll always, always, pass. The sun will rise. But soon, my world would be overflowing with rain, again.

And that’s okay.

It is a feeling that can be eased by phone calls with loved ones or hugging stuffed animals brought from Shanghai. I just wait it out like rain. As the tides of homesickness ebb and flow, I learned to do the same with loneliness.

Sometimes, I go about the day without any conversations above two minutes or none at all. Other times, I challenge myself to actively start a conversation with a stranger. Every day is different—a nerve-wrecking battle with my introvert self or a relieving break from socializing. While I connected with my friends in Shanghai, I too sought out new ones, slowly but surely piecing a mosaic of belonging.

I have also sought out cultural belonging by eating at authentic Chinese restaurants (specifically Sichuan Impression and Noodle St.), browsing Chinese grocery markets, hanging out with other Chinese people, or simply speaking Chinese—all these acted as little islands of home and comfort amid a vast, unfamiliar sea. Determined to keep one foot firmly planted in my Shanghai life, I stretch the other foot and plant it firmly in Los Angeles. 

I stand strong, anchored by my two homes.