everywhere

between my flurry of post-graduation feelings, i think the best way to describe how i’ve been feeling is adrift. the sudden realization that i will never return to the place i truly identify as my home has stirred confusion, feelings of grief, and a vague, lingering feeling that something is missing. i feel like a vagabond, wandering through space and time. i’m looking for something but i’m not sure what that something is

so i’ve made myself pretty busy this summer: wandering around tokyo and lindau and san francisco, wrapping up my undergraduate research project (which seems to become more and more complicated the more i progress), actively mending my relationship with my parents, and writing about my feelings. i have so, so much i want to write about, but between all the other things i am doing i can’t seem to move forward and write about anything without also writing about the fact that i miss MIT. last week, i attended what’ll probably be one of the coolest conferences i’ll ever go to in my lifetime, but the day i get home i’m suddenly attacked by an overwhelming sense of grief for crossing the harvard bridge, and i write about that instead. but there is so much more i want to write, so much more i need to write: a love letter to physics, letters to the friends i made at the conference, reflections on love and friendship, thoughts about all the places i have been to this summer. i’ve traveled more in the past month, including two international round-trip flights, than i have during all of undergrad combined. right after graduation i went to rhode island with my family, then tokyo solo for fun; for two weeks after that i stayed with my mom in san diego; last week i attended the 73rd nobel laureate meeting for physics in lindau, germany; and this week i am in san francisco, i guess also for fun, but also to escape the stifling suburbs of san diego—the identical white-picket-fence houses, the gentrification of everything within a five mile radius, the crucifying sameness of every day

so i have been a vagabond, wandering through time and space, looking for a piece of home in every place that i go. more times than one i have stood on the harvard bridge and thought—this is it. this is everything—in every sense possible. and maybe what makes home a home is that it’s irreplaceable. you’ll never find anything like it again, just like what distinguishes the people you like from the people you love

but today, i am at a park in san francisco. a short five-minute walk from the apartment i’m staying at, this park can only be described as extremely ordinary. (my friend described it as very mid.) scattered through this small park are people laying on the grass, facing the sky, leaning against tree trunks, reading books, chatting on benches, and walking their dogs. today the sun is shining, and even on an afternoon in the middle of july it’s a perfectly breezy 71° F. i meander through the park, winding around stout palm trees and delicate conifers. this ordinary park, one of hundreds in SF, evokes a sense of nostalgic comfort that i don’t understand. it’s not MIT, it’s not the harvard bridge, it’s not boston commons and it will never be—but today i am thinking maybe, just maybe, this is not so bad either

In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night… You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me... i first read the little prince during my freshman year. MIT will never be my home again in the way that it was, but i’m remembering that home cannot be confined to a static entity—because MIT has taught me so much about what home really is. home is blue skies and a breeze, cherry blossoms and ordinary joy. home is a new cute café each morning, wandering around san francisco with someone i love, sitting at the top of corona heights in the dark, watching little points of light float away from SFO like fireflies. home is texting your friend about the trader joe’s snack you just bought, because she bought it for you, once. it will never happen again, not in the same way, but she is still here somewhere in the world, and so are you

and home can be more. it will always be: that’s growth. as much as i’m romanticizing boston right now, i know i wanted to leave for a reason. i want warm weather and better public transportation and better vegan options and asian food, and those things can be found elsewhere. moreover, in the next stages of my life i will only become more and more deeply embedded in science. throughout my life, including at MIT, i have been hesitant to think about my academic pursuits in conjunction with the rest of my life—my hobbies, my social life, my sense of identity and belonging. because i have been insecure about my identity as a physics person my entire life, i needed to have a home to return to even if i was pushed out of this space. and this, too, will be better. when i think about my takeaways from last week’s conference in lindau, a week spent in this weird physics bubble on the other side of the world, perhaps the most important one is that i was happy. i was learning about physics and astronomy and the worlds’ problems: everything from asymptotic freedom to soap bubbles to quantum consciousness (lol). i was thinking seriously about my future as a scientist, what i want to do for myself and what i want to do for the world. i was drinking water in reusable glass bottles and three shots of espresso a day, tired out of my mind but still exhilarated. my week was filled with laughter and serious discussion with friends, brilliant friends whom just a year or two ago i might have pushed away out of my own insecurity. this too, i thought, is not so bad

the past is mixing into my future: not just grief with anxiety, like before, but rather glimpses of what home could be. maybe i will be happy like this next year in potsdam, too. maybe during grad school i will come visit SF again. maybe i can find a part of myself anywhere—even the stifling suburbs that i have spent my whole life leaving. i ought to remember that it is MIT that showed me is my capacity for love. it is MIT that gave me lifelong friends and realized my love for science and opened my eyes to deep, unflinching, ordinary joy. this is why i miss MIT, but this is also why i know that i’ll be alright

this, too, is not so bad—at an ordinary park in san francisco, my heart fills with a nostalgic comfort that i’m beginning to understand a little. i lay on the grass and look at the sky. i know that what i really mean is this: this, too, could be everything