4 tURKEy -I lost the key)

 vacuuming at my grandma’s place so that she can rest (or love me)

I have been in Turkey for three weeks now, and it's been nice seeing all my family that I haven't seen in three years. It's like we came back here three years later and no one, nothing has changed. First time i went to turkey was when i was seventeen, it was the summer before my last year of high school, i was pretty much lonely at that time, didn’t had many friends, i was spending most of my summer reading sylvia plath’s poetry, napping  at my grandparent’s home. The last two weeks in turkey were also a bit of a struggle mentaly for me. At that time it was for me the first time that i saw pretty much all my family, i felt lucky because most of my relatives remembered me from when i was a baby but for my little sister and brother it was for them and for my relatives their first encounters, my sister was fourteen at that time and  my little brother was eleven i think. How could someone spend most of his life not knowing anything  about their family here in Turkey (except the name of their relatives) and all of a sudden seventeen years after you come here and you see all those faces who look so familiar to you but at the same time they are almost strangers to you. Of course I heard their voices over the phone but the discussions always lasted two or three minutes long, it was mostly questions about school or the weather I don't know, I can't recall. All of a sudden you meet all those members of your family for the first time in seventeen years. How are you supposed to be around them ? their faces surely reminded me of my own parents, but of course when weeks passed by it just started to be I don’t know normal and not so odd to me. What was the most deranging thing to me wasn”t actually something about me but it was just the fact that my parents left all of this and when I mean all of this it’s their entire life, leaving all of that and never coming back during sixteen years, it all just seemed very overwhelming to me. Also maybe that’s why I felt so deranged, sad, disturbed when I arrived here because I felt so lucky to have them but also so unlucky because I had spent most of my life not knowing anything about them. And i tell to myself what’s the point of crying over this ? because sure it is sad but the thing that is even more sad is that you realized that seventeen years after, its like during all those years you grew up, learned so many things, saw so many things, that it almost never occured to you that your entire history, a part of your identity was taken away from you. 

This year we came back to Turkey, we were supposed to come back the year after when I was eighteen but then covid happened and my parents purchased an apartment and a car so we had no money, but this year my parents worked really hard all year and we came back. I don’t know why but when I first met Turkey it felt so nice. It gave me strength, I graduated highschool with the best grades I have ever had in my life, and now this year I will graduate with a bachelor in history. But this time turkey is making me go mad, crazy, everything, everyone appeals to me in such a pathetic way, when i see the life of my family here all i can think of is how come they never tried to kill themselves? Maybe I'm being too dramatic here but for exemple my oldest aunt, her entire life all she did was for others, she took care of my mother, my mother’s sister and brother, that's almost all she did was to take care of others, i wonder how can she define herself and her life ? is she never thinking the way i think and destroy myself. All i know is to think and manage to destroy the beautiful things i have, like instead of writing my stupid thoughts about how my aunt feels about her life, why can’t i just enjoy the moment with my family? Why does everything always has to be overanalyzed and turned into something either super sad or super dramatic? Why does everything start with a question? Nowadays all I know is to ask questions and never seek or find an answer. I don’t know ever since we landed I just wanted to go back home because this place is making me feel so uncomfortable in so many ways, like I struggle so much with Turkish language. I'm so ashamed of the way I speak my own natal langage, it(s very embarrassing. 

Why is everything here making me sick? I found no joy anymore in things, all I see is despair everywhere, in the eyes of my father all I can see is regret of his choices he made about his life. In my father’s mother eyes all i can see is sadness about losing her smart kid who could have done so many great things; everything in this stupid country who killed the uncle that i never meet is making me nervous, turkey you killed my uncle that i never meet and i hate you so much.

Before this trip, i just imagined myself healing from everything by magic but all i did during this trip is getting even more crazier that am, i thought i will stop being on my phone waiting for a new message from the boy i fancy about, but no the truth is that i did nothing near to this state of mind that i have been dreaming of before coming here. Everything is an illusion you create in your head so give yourself a try and love yourself, even the aspects that you think are pathetic just shut up and embrace it because it is beautiful just like the hope you had before coming back in turkey. Never believe something you think because how can you believe something that is constantly changing, growing, increasing or decreasing, all you can do is just let it come to you and write about it to let your mind be free (a little bit).

Honestly when you think to much about your life it just means you are a dumb bitch because you could spend this time doing shit that could make you free like reading some real shit like Plato.