No Single Place to Point To

I learned early that places do not stay, and that I would never have a single one to point to.

I was born in Kuala Lumpur, in a city that held differences without explanation. Languages overlapped. Religions existed in public. Belonging was not something you earned. It was assumed. I do not remember much from those early years, only the sense that the world was expansive and shared.

At six, I moved to the United States. DeKalb, Illinois, was a small college town where life moved slowly enough to settle into. From six to eleven, I learned how to be American without thinking about it. I pledged allegiance. I absorbed the rhythms. I believed this was where things made sense.

Then we left.

I returned to Malaysia, first to Petaling Jaya, a place I was briefly familiar with, then to Kedah, where I spent the rest of my teenage years. That move changed me. Secondary school did not offer belonging. It demanded endurance. I learned how to wait. How to count time. Every chance I got, I escaped back to KL or PJ, not because they were ideal, but because they reminded me that another version of myself existed somewhere else.

After my SPM exams, I followed my parents to Athens, Georgia, during their sabbatical. It was meant to be temporary. Instead, it reopened something I had tried to ignore. When it was time to fly back to Malaysia, I felt a grief I could not explain without admitting the truth. I had never stopped missing the United States.

So I decided not to stay.

The United States was too far, too expensive, too much of a risk for my parents to accept. I compromised and went to Australia instead. Melbourne was the nearest dream that felt possible.

Australia was beautiful. The beaches, the open land, and the quiet confidence of nature were undeniable. But life there felt contained. Things closed early. Social life revolved around bars I did not care for. It was expensive, isolating, and I was not allowed to work. I was also there during a period when racial tension toward Asians was present enough to register. Not always loud, but persistent.

Still, university suited me. I loved learning. I responded to the structure of study in a way I never had before. I graduated, returned to Malaysia, and immediately realized I was not finished.

Not with school. Not with becoming.

This time, I did not compromise.

I set my sights on New York University. I did not yet fully know the city, only fragments from a childhood visit and television. The Cosby Show. Friends. Seinfeld. Stories of people living tightly together, lives intersecting by force and proximity. I did not know what New York would demand of me. I only knew I wanted to be there.

I moved alone in 2003, into a city still carrying the weight of 9/11.

And I belonged immediately.

New York in those years was raw and alert, but it was also deeply human. The city felt like it was paying attention. No one asked me to explain myself. Difference was not something you apologized for. It was the baseline. I studied during the day and worked whenever I could. I learned subway lines the way other people learned family trees. I walked endlessly through neighborhoods that felt distinct yet connected, absorbing the city by foot.

I was broke most of the time. I measured weeks by MetroCard refills and grocery calculations. And yet I felt rich in ways I still struggle to explain. I was learning. I was becoming. I was allowed to take up space without permission. The city demanded independence and rewarded resilience. It sharpened my instincts. It taught me how to move quickly, how to speak plainly, and how to trust myself.

That city shaped my temperament. Direct. Impatient with pretense. Comfortable with contradiction. Even now, years later, I recognize myself in it.

After my master’s degree, I moved to Chicago to be closer to Tom. Life shifted again. Marriage changed the scale of things. The city was familiar in a different way, grounded and solid, but the experience was quieter. We lived in the suburbs. Sidewalks were replaced by driveways. Community took effort instead of proximity.

And then there was the winter.

Chicago's winter was not subtle. It pressed in on you. It slowed everything down. Snow piled high. Wind cut through layers. Life narrowed to interiors and routines. I learned to mother there. To build warmth inside when the outside offered none. It was a season of growth that did not announce itself loudly, but it stayed with me.

Eventually, we moved again.

This time to Sunnyvale, California.

Here, the light is generous. The weather is kind. The landscape is open and green. My boys are teenagers and tweens now, growing into themselves under wide skies. I love the diversity here. The food. The languages. The way difference exists casually, woven into daily life.

And yet I keep circling the same question.

Is staying in the United States still the right choice?

This is not the country I fell in love with as a child. Or even as a student.

The tension feels sharper now. The sense of safety feels conditional. I find myself gravitating toward Malaysians not out of nostalgia, but out of relief. With them, I do not have to translate context. I do not have to explain why certain things land harder. I feel safe.

And then, recently, Zohran Mamdani won.

Watching a Muslim win in New York, the city where I learned who I was, hit me harder than I expected. It felt like recognition. Like proof.

Proof that the New York I knew personally still exists. A city that makes room. A city that does not ask you to dilute yourself to participate.

That moment mattered because of what came alongside it.

This past week, I have found myself unable to shake the death of Renee Good. I did not know her, yet her name has stayed with me. Thirty-seven years old. A mother. A writer. A poet. Someone described by her wife as someone who sparkled. Someone who had just completed a school drop-off and was on her way home.

She died during a federal operation in her neighborhood. The circumstances are still being examined. Accounts differ. Investigations continue. None of that has quieted what lingered for me.

What stayed was the ordinariness of the moment. A morning. A car. A familiar routine. Words exchanged that did not sound angry. A life intersecting briefly with power and not surviving the encounter.

I have felt heavy and unsettled since. Not in a way that demands resolution, but in a way that alters how you move through the day. It has made me aware of how fragile certainty can feel. How quickly the ground you thought you understood can shift beneath you.

I am not drawing conclusions here. I am naming what entered my body and did not leave. The grief. The anger. The quiet recalibration of what safety means to me now.

This is what happens when you grow up between countries. You carry multiple versions of what home once felt like. You notice when the present no longer matches the memory.

I do not know yet where I belong next.

I only know that I recognize the places and the moments that allow me to breathe without explanation. And I am no longer willing to pretend that question is not worth asking.