Sometimes, when I’m abroad and people ask what brought me to their city or country, I jokingly reply that I’m mainly just there to not be in Singapore. Okay, fine—it’s often not a joke. The day my country’s home affairs and law minister stood in Parliament and talked of war—a war against drugs in which my friends and I were targeted as being on the ‘wrong side’—I thanked my lucky stars that I would be flying out to Taiwan for the rest of the month. I just wanted to breathe some different air for awhile. No, correction: I just wanted to breathe.

Singapore is home, but it’s also not a particularly relaxing place for me. I simultaneously feel safe and unsafe, comfortable and uncomfortable. I am aware, perhaps hyper-aware, that even on a swelteringly hot tropical island there can be thin ice, and that I skate on it regularly. I feel like a liability to my friends and acquaintances; I keep wondering if being on good terms with me will bring them trouble. I live with the knowledge that my words and actions can and will be taken in bad faith and turned against me. And most of all, Singapore is not a place that has welcomed the one I love, and we will not be able to live as a complete family in my own city. It is no surprise, given these conditions, that I need time away.

I’ve spent most of May in Taipei. There was work that brought me here, and I’m also still working remotely so it hasn’t just been all fun and games, but I think I still surprised some people when I said I didn’t have plans to venture outside of Taipei. It’s because I’m really not here as a tourist; I’m here to take a break from my own country. I’m super grateful for the privilege of having such breaks.

Taipei is a foreign and familiar place; foreign because I still constantly have to look up directions on Google Maps to get anywhere, and I’m sometimes still a little confused by Mandarin terms I’ve never heard or had to use in Singapore, but familiar because I’ve been here enough times by now to have registered some landmarks of my own. I have friends here to meet up with, favourite spots that, if I were here for longer, would become favourite haunts. I feel like I’m a happier and more patient person here (especially so when the weather is cooler). I appreciate the greater sense of freedom, the reduced sense of being policed and micromanaged. I admire the way people express their connection to their country here. I even enjoy the mental switch of having to mainly communicate in a different language.

Still… I’m ready to head back.

It’s such a bizarre, contradictory feeling. I said goodbye to my husband less than 24 hours ago. We don’t know when we’ll see each other again; I miss him terribly already. I’m not thrilled by thought of life without him back in Singapore, of days and weeks in the flat that I still think of as our home but is really just where I live with our three cats, his absence obvious and felt. I’m not eager to go back to a life where I’m constantly reminded of the need to think and overthink everything I say and do (although I’m also doing that here anyway so I think it’s already become entrenched in my system, thanks I hate it). But for all that… I’m still looking forward a little bit to being back.

I’m looking forward to cuddling my cats, visiting my mum and cuddling her kittens, visiting my friend and introducing myself to his latest feline overlord (a pattern is emerging here). I’m looking forward to seeing my friends, to café work dates with my bestie, to the sights and sounds and flavours that I know well. I’m even looking forward to getting back into the rhythm that I’d fallen into working from home, and my silly rice cooker and the silly meals I make in it.

I guess this is the messiness of home: nowhere else is as infuriating or triggering as Singapore is for me, yet it is only a matter of time before I am drawn (back) to it, again and again. I will perhaps never fully understand the relationship that I have with my country, nor will I ever be able to fully articulate the meaning it holds. This ambivalence that I have for it marks me as unmistakably Singaporean—it is a feeling that can only grow out of a deep attachment and a lifetime of encounters, because I wasn’t only raised in Singapore, I was also raised by Singapore.