Away and Apart: Far from Familiarity 

Written by Subhashree Pattnaik

Staying away from your comfort zone, your home, your immediate social environment in which you were brought up and made to live comfortably is not just an act of individuality but also an exploration of what it means to be an individual, independent and responsible of your own becoming. The reality of being in subjective charge makes its way into the fancy of living on your own terms. And the acceptance then becomes quiet, a silent act of changing and becoming “someone” to make meaning of, to be able to define life. 

The question then arises–  had you been at home, your comfort zone, would this reality still have settled in you like dust on an unwanted road? Would your comfort have been able to give way for this truth and change to be accepted? Is that why your home has always been so reluctant of letting you go? Is that why the eyes held you back at your departure, and is that why your city asked you to not flicker through its flickering lights? To give it one last chance at making you someone. And is that why confidence overlapped with nervous adrenaline rushes? 

But you must move out of their comfort zone because life will turn. And it is only when that responsibility makes itself inevitable that homesickness becomes a tangible and separate genre of emotion if you could at all sarcastically label it the same way (coming from an experience myself). The recollection of familiarity becomes mourning. You mourn your comfort and desire to be loved by being cared for.. Independence could be an overwhelming change. Thus, the frustration always ends up taking the shape of missing and wishing, past and a far away alternative present. 

Missing comfort and missing home then often become a subconscious action that arises out of a conditioned factor of environment. This is not to challenge personal bonds and  human relations. But to reflect on the fact that even “personal” is conditioned. Bonds themselves are formed inside conditioned factors. This whole narration of conditioning is to reflect the emotional vulnerability of being away and Apart from such conditions that construct comfort. 

These moments are not only moments of intense vulnerabilities but also  sheer joy. For even moments of extreme satisfaction or relaxation bring a sense of desire to belong and to share what is yours with the comfort of whoever provided it. But situational and distant acceptance becomes easier  than moments of recounting vulnerabilities. Their absence becomes an omnipresent manifestation of them. Which impacts  the very deep connection of comfort the individual experiences. It is yet again a deconstruction of comfort and a sense of subjective reassurance. 

The conditioning factors include  frustration. Sometimes, there is a guilt of abandoning and a sense of being abandoned. When helplessness takes the shape of grief, the frustration of you leaving takes on guilt. The absence then becomes a tangible element of intangible desire. Familiarity begs recognition, unfamiliarity begs realization of your reality. 

The only reality being that life— away and Apart is the only truth and you can choose subplots of life from that one truth. Independence breeds unfamiliarity that then turns into a familiar condition. At the end, a conscious dream takes the shape of a comfort zone that was once a reality.