Some woes on my upcoming trip...

In about a week I’ll be going to Armenia – Yerevan to be more exact. And as it happens before every trip, I can already feel that gut-wrenching feeling of anxiety that I experience every time I am about to visit my own homeland.

My previous trips there were either returning home after a temporary stay the length of which was always predetermined; business, if you one can consider a research fellowship as such; or an escape of sorts and what one might call an act of self-liberation. This time the sole purpose of my trip is to see my family who I only see every year or every other year, depending on how lucky I am.

I am, of course, excited. My mother and my brother are the dearest, my most favorite people in the world. Words cannot describe how much I miss them when I am away. Words cannot describe how happy I am to be seeing them again.

And yet, despite the excitement, despite the long anticipation, the gut-wrenching feeling prevails. From what I experienced last time, going back to Armenia no longer feels like going back home. I guess there really is no such a thing as going back home - how true is that sad cliché...

Going back to Armenia has always been a difficult task – it’s an emotionally charged and rather taxing experience. It’s as if one’s entering a completely different world that has an extra dimension – something so subtle and elusive that it can hardly be described. And yet, it is because I have been away for such a long time, because of my familiarity and simultaneous alienation from my own culture that I become aware of that extra dimension. And that is making me afraid.

The source of my fear and discomfort is the fact that the minute I set foot on that land, the minute I immerse myself in that society, I will, immediately and inevitably be judged on every step I make. I will be judged – not because of who I am and what I’ve done, not because of being unconventional in the traditional Armenian sense, but because that’s what seems to be the default state of my people, that’s what gives the place that extra dimension, the feeling that there is always, always, someone’s eyes on one’s back, the feeling of being watched, talked about, disapproved of…

Is she successful enough? Is she well-dressed enough? How much money does she have? And more importantly, how much money does she spend? Did she gain weight? Did she lose weight? Oh, she doesn’t have kids! Why doesn’t she have kids by now? What ever happened to that husband of hers? Divorced? Oh, she shouldn’t have married that American in the first place. Her mother should have never let her. Poor girl, she’s damaged goods now. She’s still a student? She’s almost thirty for god’s sake! Good lord! Eh, her mother should have never let her go to America. Oh, but still, she looks like she’s lost weight. I wonder what diet she’s on. They usually come back from there all blown up like balloons…

I am well aware that social scrutiny of this sort exists probably exists everywhere, including the States. Especially in Richmond. And yet, the social fabric here has been lose enough and I have been trivially unimportant enough to be able to escape the scrutiny that my own close-knit society subjects me though its magnifying glass…

I remember, most of my adult years of living in Yerevan were spent in resentment and constant effort to defy just that. The resentment was what gave me form, the tension and resistance was what contained that form - in a way that tension defined me. I remember how it felt when I relocated to the States – the absence of tension. Suddenly not having that familiar weight, the familiar tension felt as if there was no gravity. It felt as if I was scattered all over the place… It was as if I had to learn, all over again, who the hell I was – or rather, it felt as if I had to redefine and build myself from scratch, this time, without including the resentment into the equation…

The fact that I feel like a stranger in my own home can be understood. The changes that may have taken place in Yerevan, the city that I once knew like the back of my hand, however alien and potentially frustrating, are not the cause of my unease. The absence of one Fat Bastard in any given drinking or declothing establishment, however disappointing and heartbreaking, may be overcome… What’s giving me the pains is that every time I’m back, it feels like I have to constantly and ferociously justify myself, the core of my existence and everything that I stand for. Even if I have long stopped doing that everywhere else, it is still making me nauseous…