Home

Reading the usual blogs I go through almost daily, I met with Eric's blog, Not Eric, which I've come to enjoy pretty much lately. This time in particular Eric has mentioned something that has been on my mind very much lately (meaning with "lately" my last 10 years or so) that is when to define a place as "home".
I have been living in America for 4 years now, I'm going to school, have an apartment, a car, a boyfriend, but still I do not feel America as home. This is kind of upseting for me because I thought that with my "unusual" capacity to adapt to places and people I would be able to adjust to the American culture and feel like "a fish in the water" soon after my first arrival. But it simply is not the case. Four years later I'm still struggling with my loneliness, with the fact that I know people but I don't "know" people, I simply can't find that little something that makes two people click instantly and follow a conversation for hours, feel sort of identified with each other, and even understood by the other person.
For several months I thought that I had some sort of mental problem that did not allow me to connect to people the way I used to, and deep inside I used to find me telling to myself that hey! I am a cool person! I am nice to be with! I just don't find the way to express that to people, and eventually everything will be alright!, I'll have as many friends as in Ecuador, I'll feel in the right place in the right time, and blah blah blah, but not one of those things really happened. And then, in a nice summer night I arrived to Ecuador, and 24 hrs later I had already met several people, talked to many others, had phone calls and gone shopping with my girlfriends. It was amazing. Suddenly I felt this huge relieve because, as it seemed, the problem was not me, the problem was that I am not adapted to America yet, I am still a foreigner and will be a stranger for a long time.
Then again, America is not home. But Ecuador is not home either, as when I left this place I just disconnected from it (in order to make my leaving less painful) and now I do not feel that I belong here, and the single thought of coming back to live in Ecuador scares me to death. Thus, where the hell do I belong? Will this feeling be here for much longer? How do I get to belong to a place where everything, from the weather to how people talk, is totally different to what I grew up with? How do I get the feeling of belonging to a place like Ecuador, where I dislike so many many many things? ...