The Truth of the Situation

Hawaii is my home.

I know that now.

But there is a truth inside those words
I have struggled to explain.

It is a place where I blend in
by skin tone,
but not culturally.

A place where you look up
and feel you can touch the sky,

where people and land
carry deep pride,

and spirits of the past
call to their lineage
from forests
along paths older than memory.

Leaving Hawaii is bittersweet.

So is leaving my marriage.

I love my wife more than anything,
but love came with stipulations,

just as Hawaii does.

Perhaps the truth is
I did not try to change for Hawaii.

I changed for her.

This is where my wife was born,
where she grew up.

The place was part of her
long before it became part of me.

I wanted to understand
the land,
the people,
the history,
the struggle,

to respect the place
that made her
and find a way to belong.

Stateside,
I was used to standing out.

There,
my skin allowed me to blend in,

but blending in
carried its own demands.

I felt I had to act
like a local Braddah.

My skin could pass.

My voice could not.

So I tried to adapt
to the local dialect,

not to become someone else,
but to belong beside her
without losing myself.

I thought I could walk
a tightrope between
who I was
and who I thought
I needed to become.

But it wasn’t me.

I speak in a proper English tone,
with words shaped
by my own country of origin.

What is me
is learning the land and its people,
and giving equal respect
to both.

My feet never touch the ʻāina,
but my spirit does.

My hands never work the land,
but my understanding
and reverence for it do.

Somewhere along that tightrope,
I lost my balance.

Trying to become
the man I thought she needed,
I lost pieces
of the man she had loved.

I changed because I loved her,

but the farther I walked
toward belonging,
the less certain I became
of who was walking.

Confidence became doubt.

Direction became questions.

Eventually,
I could not tell
whether I was adapting
or disappearing.

Still,
I have learned much
about true existence:

a symbiotic relationship
between land and people,

planting seeds,
fostering growth,
and returning the harvest
to both.

I have learned to understand
the struggle brought by occupation,

its laws,
its effort toward self-sufficiency
as populations and technology grow,

and the displacement
of those who have lived there
since ancient seafaring Polynesians
first settled those lands,

followed by Western expansion.

I care deeply
for the people,
the struggle,
the history,

and the spirit
that binds them.

But I am still Haole.

And maybe it took leaving
to understand that.

There are things you cannot see
when you are standing
too close to them.

So I stepped back.

Far enough to see Hawaii
as though I might never
see it again.

Far enough to see my marriage
from somewhere outside of it.

Far enough
to see myself.

I went there
trying not to stand out.

I learned the words.

Changed my voice.

Walked the tightrope.

Somewhere along the way
I stopped looking down
to see where my own feet were.

Now Hawaii is behind me.

So is she.

And I am standing here
with the strange realization

that I spent so much time
trying to find my place
beside her,

I no longer know
where mine is.

Maybe that is why
I keep looking back.

At the land.

At her.

At the man
who first arrived there.

I can still see him.

I just don’t know yet

if he can see me.