Yesterday I became a U.S. citizen. I’m fortunate to have been eligible just three years after entering the country, and yet those three years felt long. I say the following with awareness of how incredibly privileged I am: it’s strange to feel like a guest in the place you call home.
There are, of course, many reasons to become a citizen—not least the right to exercise your vote, and to run for office if it becomes obvious that you should do so. You get protections that you didn’t have. Benefits should you need them. A certain security that you otherwise lacked.
Those are all reasons that I care about, but they weren’t the first things I thought of the moment I completed my oath and received my certificate. The first thing was a little more human and a bit more squishy: it was simply the feeling you get when you’re home.
I mean that in the most literal way possible. I’m not commenting on politics or immigration. I’m literally speaking about that feeling you get when you crawl back into your own bed after spending the last week at a hotel for a work trip. A soothing off-ramp for your nervous system.
You don’t realize that you’re carrying that feeling around until you’re not anymore. This will seem like a goofy example, but it’s like when you forget that you’ve left the extractor on whilst cooking, and once you switch it off you realize how wonderful the world sounds without it.
For the past three years I’ve lived in and contributed to this place that I call home, but without fully belonging to it, nor it to me. You feel responsible for your home because it’s your mess to clean up and life is better if you do. I’m glad to feel at home, and I hope to look after it.