For me, my catharsis is experienced in two different ways:

1. Writing 

2. Girl Talk

Identity, I eventually learned, isn’t a passport category. It isn’t a fixed nationality. It doesn’t demand that you choose one language and abandon the other. Identity can be hybrid, fluid, and context-dependent.

I’ve told different variations of my story before, and every time I tell it I come to a deeper, complex understanding of myself.

This took my mind off any stress or sadness I was holding on to, more than Alaska itself could.

But as I prepare to bid farewell to this home-ish place, setting off for university halfway across the world, I think that I have failed to keep it out of my heart entirely.

In retrospect (with the wisdom I’ve gained in the two months since I’ve bid you farewell for good), I have no idea how I was so confident, given how often I am wrong.