It’s been almost a decade since I moved abroad. In this decade, two things have happened:
- I haven’t acquired a sense of home in the country I moved to.
- The country I moved away from has lost any remaining sense of home as well.
I’m not a person without a nation, but I am, as it stands, one without a national identity. There’s no country I can call home.
It was happening gradually, and it started long before the move. While I still lived in the only country I’d ever known, whatever geographical roots were there were shrinking and turning to dust. The apartment I grew up in did feel like home. My family did feel like home. But the country? Less and less so. And don’t even get me started on my home town.
I was wilting there. I was suffocating, unable to relate to the very culture and background that raised me. I couldn’t help it: I dreamt of getting away.
When I moved abroad to start uni, it was pure bliss. The freedom felt intoxicating, and everything seemed possible at last. I thought I’d live here for the rest of my life. Except…
As months passed, the initial enchantment of my new surroundings were slowly lifting, and I was starting to better understand how I actually felt about this new place I thought I’d grow fond of enough to call home. The opportunities here were plenty, compared to where I’d come from, but paradoxically, it wasn’t the local culture that was drawing me in — it was the international one.
Over the years, I was crossing paths with more and more people from various corners of the world. To me, someone who’d never been outside of Europe before (still haven’t, by the way), it was a cultural feast. I was getting to know what else there is in the world through the people I met, and by doing that, I was discovering my own — what should I call it, exactly? Tastes? I don’t know if that’s the right word. But I was trying things on, testing how they felt, seeing what would fit. And to my dismay — because that meant my search for a home was far from over — my current country of residence wasn’t it. However I looked at it, it just felt wrong.
And the country I’m originally from — even more so.
I started catching myself avoiding contact with any manifestations of my country of origin. Any evidence of its culture in my close proximity brought me embarrassment, and being in the presence of my compatriots (I wince even as I write this word) made me withdraw and seek an escape. In modern terms, I felt cringe.
For years, I carried a lot of shame and guilt around the fact that I’m not a patriot. I hid it the best I could. I’d get creative with my answers if someone asked me whether I missed home — “I do miss my family” — and wear a phony smile whenever in a conversation with someone from the same country as me. The need to hide my true feelings became even more urgent as I observed other people light up when they were talking about their home. It was especially prominent with Latinos, who’d crossed the Atlantic to come to Europe to study something or other. They’d form tightly-knit friend groups, and I often heard them speak longingly of their local traditions or the home-made meals their mums used to make them. It didn’t matter one bit that they were from all over Latin America — they understood each other so well. They were so united in their homesickness.
And I stood there, a representative of an alien race, not able to relate to the warmth in their voices as they were reminiscing about their lives in Colombia, or Peru, or Argentina.
There’s another piece of the national identity puzzle that played a vital role in stirring trouble for me: the language factor. My relationship with a country and a culture starts and ends with the language. I’ve been attracted to foreign languages for years. I say “attracted” because I mean that I’ve only ever voluntarily learned those languages that I found genuinely beautiful. The practicality of a language or a demand for it on the job market matter little to me if I love the way it feels: charming, sexy, alive.
It probably comes as no surprise that things didn’t work out between me and the language of my country of residence. We tried to build a relationship even before my move abroad. We went on a few dates, and I made a conscious effort to overlook a few flaws, to meet him halfway when necessary. In the end, I had to conclude I was trying to force something that just wasn’t meant to be.
Instead, I was falling in love with English at breakneck speed.
English, not my native language, was my high school sweetheart, but it wasn’t until my university years that things became serious between us. As I expanded my social circle with people from around the globe, I was starting to talk, read, and, most importantly, write in English more than ever before — and have I mentioned English was also my major at university?
All I needed then was to fall in love with someone with whom I could only communicate in English (check) and spend four years saying “Good morning” and “Goodnight” to him in English (and check) — and here I am, wielding English left, right, and center in nearly every aspect of my life without a shred of impostor syndrome. Now, there’s also a bit of French in the cultural mix and very generous quantities of Spanish, but really, it’s writing in English that’s become my truest form of expression. Which is wonderful — but it’s also taking me mentally further and further away from my culture of origin, and I don’t feel like coming back.
The all-consuming power of language over my life is a story for another day, but it was instrumental in forming my identity over the past few years, because, believe it or not, it has helped me acquire a sense of home that wasn’t linked to a country.
What is home, then?
In the most unorthodox, rebellious manner, I’ve built an inner world that feels like home. Through navigating literature, films, certain online content, and an ungodly amount of therapy and journaling, I have cultivated a place of abundance and comfort inside myself that feels like home. But why stop there? I expanded my inner world into the only corner of the outer world that was within my control — my rented apartment. I stocked it with books of my choice, fairy lights, studio Ghibli prints, candles, film cameras, house plants, and a number of tea varieties. There are two ukuleles on my book shelf; my fridge is covered in photos. I have a cat, for heaven’s sake — it doesn’t get any more me than that.
I couldn’t possibly bend a whole country to my tastes and preferences — and why would I want to do that? — but it’s within my power to make a proper home out of the place where I rest, write, and read, the place that holds me when I’m sick, or tired, or too unwell to go outside, the place where I need to be able to feel safe.
The ability to find home within ourselves — and project it on our immediate surroundings — is an underrated power, because this is the kind of home nobody can take away from us. It’s portable and indestructible, and while my search for a home in a more geographical sense isn’t over, I’m eternally grateful for the kind of home I’ve been able to cultivate for myself.
I’ve been attracted to foreign languages for years. I say “attracted” because I mean that I’ve only ever voluntarily learned those languages that I found genuinely beautiful. The practicality of a language or a demand for it on the job market matter little to me if I love the way it feels: charming, sexy, alive.
My next stop is Spain. I hope I’ll have more luck there. I hope I’ll find the home I’m looking for, or perhaps a completely unexpected kind that will take me by surprise and make me stop looking.
It’s not a country’s fault if I don’t feel at home there. I don’t resent or hate any country for my failing to feel like I belong, but I also don’t want to feel ashamed of the lack of love for a place where I just happened to be born — without even having a say in the matter. The truth is, my current identity has been more influenced by the cultural fluidity of my recent years than by the geographical location of the first 18 years of my life. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me, and it certainly doesn’t make me a bad person.
What it makes me is a seeker. And so I’ll keep looking.
And until I find what I’m looking for, I’ll be my own home.
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