Family sat around the table on the backyard patio, everyone having pulled up a plastic chair. Dinner is long past and so is dessert and everyone has launched into conversation and laughter and drinks. All of a sudden, the conversation shifts over to old high school memories. Someone begins singing the alma mater of my high school and soon a chorus of voices join in. Home.
My parents are high school sweethearts. Their high school is also where my mom’s sisters went and my dad’s brothers and my married-into-the-family uncle and my married-into-the-family aunty and – okay, you get the idea. Most importantly, it’s also where I went to high school.
It’s weird sometimes walking through my neighborhood whether it be up to where my high school sits at the top of the hill or to the small shopping center to grab Jamba Juice with my brother knowing that these are the exact same roads that my mom would’ve gone biking on alongside her neighborhood friends after school.
It’s weird sometimes going to old local restaurants that have been on the island for decades, owned by the same family for decades, with my dad to eat okazuya-like food knowing that these are the exact same restaurants that my great-grandma would take him and his brothers to.
And yet, these small things bring me a sense of joy, tie me back to the island where my parents grew up, and my grandparents grew up, and my great-grandparents grew up. These are the roads and restaurants that were my parents and they are also mine as well.
When you live a 5-6 hour flight away from the nearest state on the mainland, it’s easy to slip into a sort of disconnection from the rest of the continent. Hawai’i is so unalike every other place I’ve been, every other place I’ve stayed. It’s its own thing of food, music, people, culture. It’s the reason why my older cousin transferred back home from college in Nebraska, because she felt a tugging pull to return home.
So, why did I go? Why am I here, Seattle, Washington, instead of where every single one of my family members and extended family members are?
Well, I didn’t always live in Hawai’i. In fact, my brother and I are the only ones who weren’t born there. For the initial years of our lives we lived in a small, cookie cutter Arizonian suburbia. It was at the end of third grade when my parents told me they wanted to move back to Oahu. Their parents were getting older. They found job positions that worked great for them. They missed home.
I was livid. I don’t do well with change. I have a morning schedule and a night schedule and a routine for when I’m in the shower and a routine for when I do my schoolwork. I like consistency and I like things staying as they are. I was sad and I was scared.
But here it is, the real kicker, moving was one of the best things that could’ve ever happened to me.
In fourth grade I was forced into student council which brought notoriously shy me out of my shell. In seventh grade my grandma passed away. In sophomore year I got a dog who I love more than anything in the world. In junior year I joined the school newspaper and made friendships lasting lifetimes. In senior year my relatives moved back to Oahu where they grew up after the tragedy in Lahaina, Maui where they lived and worked. Through the good and the bad, I was surrounded by people who I cared for so deeply.
So, let’s catch up: I moved. Right.
And I’ve had bad bads. I’ve had hard days, hard nights, hard weeks. I’ve felt burning pits of emptiness in my stomach. I’ve had to search up counters and calculators to figure out how many more days until I could go home. I’ve missed my mom, and my dad, and my brother, and my dog. I’ve been small, so small where I curled up into myself on the side of my dorm building where people can’t find you just to cry. Hell, I’m still willing to bet that a year from now there will be times where I still feel like this.
Change is scary. Being cut off from where you had spent so many years of your life, so many memories, is not easy. Being alone, an entire coastline and ocean away from all of the important people in your life is not easy.
So, I ask once more, why did I go? Why am I here?
Because your bad bads come with your good goods. I’ve been able to feel the euphoria of putting on my headphones and staring out the window of the Link. I’ve taken classes with professors I respect so heavily, with topics that engage me and reinvigorate my love for learning. I’ve made friends who I care about so deeply who I get to see every week. I’ve gone out and explored every nook and cranny of Seattle within my reach. I’ve seen the leaves change and the mountains in the horizon and geese and squirrels and crows and felt myself free, free, free.
Because even though I was sad and scared, if I didn’t move from Arizona to Hawai’i I wouldn’t be half the person I am today. Similarly, I said to myself, if I don’t move from Hawai’i to Washington, how am I meant to grow as a person? If college is supposed to be about those titular ideas of growth then why am I not pursuing them?
So, today and tomorrow and months from now I’m going to pave new roads even if they’re the ones that my mom hasn’t walked before and I’m going to venture to new restaurants even if they’re the ones that my dad hasn’t eaten at before. And it’s going to be sad and scary because I don’t share them with my family anymore but that doesn’t mean they are not just as mine as the roads and restaurants back on the island.
That’s why I’m here. Having to make any move is hard, I know this. I’ve lived this. But, improvement is growth is change. Without the rigor of change, growth will never occur. Plus, I like to think I’ve carved out a pretty nice spot to call a new place home.
