The night before I left home, I decided to take a solitary walk on the beach.

Every day since I was 12 years old — almost without fail — I would walk or run the same route from my condo: through the underpass, past the skate park, around the lake and up until the little bridge before the bike shop.

Most of the time, I listened to music, rotating through my obsession of the moment: from Harry Styles at 15, to Hozier by 16, to the Arctic Monkeys by 17. On days when my inner consciousness would drown out the lyrics, I would spend my hour in silence, with only the chatter, bicycle bells and cicadas whirring through the trees to perforate my internal torrent.

The night before I left home was one of those days. 

Any song I played seemed to burn a hole in my chest. “Scott Street” was too mournful; “What Ever Happened?” too visceral; and “When The Sun Hits” too melancholic. Everywhere I turned, too, sent an agonising memory coursing through me, that left my legs numb and eyes damp.

“There’s the small road next to the parking lot where I learned to skate. There’s the spot where we all got drunk on New Years. There’s the bench where I had my first real kiss.”

Shadows of myself seemed to walk with me. After all, I had lived in the same condo for most of my life, with the brief exceptions of a two-year period in Germany and a three-year stay in Malaysia. This beach was a landmark in my life: a yardstick against which I could map my growing up.

Yet, walking my all-too-familiar path after returning from break, I was disoriented to find that it felt different. The once-verdant green trees and bushes speckled with pink flowers — my favourite sight come spring, when all would be in bloom — looked hazy, as if coated in film. The thick, humid air that once draped me like a blanket now left my skin damp and breathing heavy. Even the sea, which would turn to a still turquoise glass that I would photograph endlessly as the monsoon approached, looked murky and grey.

The wonder of my daily ritual had died, and I could not fathom why.

Forlorn, I sought refuge in the experiences of my friends who too had ventured abroad. As we spoke over the table at dinners, or in my car whilst blasting music on the highway, they each expressed the words I had known but dreaded hearing.

We were each living two lives. 

Home, though still ever-comforting and populated by the people and cultural nuances that made us who we are, was now a living memory; a moment frozen in time as we existed elsewhere to become who we needed to be. My heart ached as their words sank into my bones. Only my shadows remained at the beach. I was homesick at home.

Today, sitting at Yale, I feel the same pang as I yearn for Singapore. A gnawing grief tears through my stomach as I feel myself change and settle into my new life and self. “Do I like who I’m becoming? Who was I before? Who do I want to be?” The questions echo through my mind but remain frustratingly unanswered.

When the growing pains are too terrible to bear, I call my parents, my sister, and my friends — my life rafts on this rocky sea. My father, ever-too proficient in saying exactly what I need to hear, delivers a refrain that I hold dear and repeat in silent prayer: “to discover who you are meant to be, you have to break free from the comfort of being who you were.”

On days when this conversation and mantra do not suffice, I take a solitary walk: down Hillhouse Avenue, over to Sachem Street, to the Divinity School and back.

Maybe some things never change.