this weekend a friend asked me, as we walked through the mall, if i wanted to leave the country--permanently. it was ironic that he happened to ask me only moments after this sudden urge to live in another place hit me (it was something about the mall and how i felt out of place). i told him that i've been thinking about it more and more, but haven't acted on it for several reasons. the main reason: i don't know where i would go. wherever i end up, some social injustice will still exist. even if i went back to the philippines--the land of my birth--the place i called "home" before i went back this past summer. but i don't want to live there. it's not home. my very being is often questioned (i.e., people asking me why i'm so fat and why i have short hair despite being born there). not to mention more and more activists are murdered--since gloria macapagal-arroyo took control in 2001, "319 activists have been killed by suspected military or police personnel and pro-government death squads and another 185 political activists have disappeared".

i began to rationalize in my head that i'd rather stay in america and fight the struggles here because this is my home (well, i've known no other really. i don't remember much from my first 7 years in the philippines. it was so long ago. and i was just a kid.) but lately, it's been so difficult to get up in the morning. but i shouldn't even be complaining. my job, as stressful and exhausting and frustrating as it can be, functions within a very privileged and protected environment. even the notion of leaving the country and moving elsewhere is dripping with privilege. after all, who has the resources to do it? 

i've used "home" several times, but don't really know what i mean by it.