Losing My Sense of Belonging

Living life as a teenager was easy… I longed for the days where I could be myself, voice my opinions without consequences. I could talk with friends hours on end about what we had planned for the weekend. My mother would always scold me for coming home late. I remember how peaceful it was walking through Chiyoda at night on the way to Tokyo Station where I would catch the business man filled train home. I could think clearly about my life and I was happy. Things have changed since the days I long for…

Let me introduce myself. My name is Aiko Sasaki, 18 years of age, Japanese. I lived with my mother in Oimachi, Tokyo in a tiny apartment. I never met my father but my mother always told me stories about him, how he was a good man. When I was sixteen my mother passed away suddenly from a serious illness. As I didn’t know where my father was, I was send to a city called Melbourne in Australia where a would live with my uncle. My life had fallen apart within a month… my mother passed away, I had to leave my friends, my school and my country. I had lost every thing that i knew. At the time I was confused and upset and didn’t know what to do.

Using the english I learnt in Japan I struggled to make friends at school. I guess part of the problem was that I had different interest from everyone around me. While the girls in my class talked about a singer named Justin Bieber, I tried to talk about J-pop and Harajuku fashion with them but they showed no interest. I felt lonely inside, I had no one to laugh and talk with… No one…

Desperately looking for someone/something to fill in the lonely feeling I had inside of me, I started dressing differently and tried to mimic how the girls talked at school. As the years past I was able to fit in normally and make friends but I wasn’t happy like I was back in Tokyo. I wasn’t myself or someone who I wanted to become. Everyday I would put on a facade to protect myself. I was scared of being an outcast. All I wanted was for my life to return to normal.

One day after school my Uncle told me that we would be moving back to Tokyo, he said that he had to relocate for the company he was working for. I couldn’t believe what I had heard. A month later we moved back to Tokyo where I re-enrolled at my old school to finish my final year. All my friends were shocked and happy to have me back, they said that I had changed a lot. Overtime I started to return back into my normal self but