Home is a Rotating Concept: I Feel Foreign in Both Countries
Home is a Rotating Concept: I Feel Foreign in Both Countries
Ever feel like a tourist in your own birthplace and an outsider in your current city? Let’s talk about the messy, beautiful reality of living in the diaspora.
The Perpetual Cultural Jet Lag
I recently found myself standing in the middle of a grocery store in my parents' hometown, staring at a bottle of sauce I used to love as a kid. I realized I did not know how to ask the clerk for a shopping basket without sounding like a tourist. It is a weird, unsettling sensation to feel like a stranger in the place where your roots began, yet still feel like a permanent visitor in the city where you actually pay rent.
Being part of the diaspora is like living in a constant state of cultural jet lag. You are always caught between two worlds, never fully arriving in either. Lately, I have been diving into a lot of diaspora literature, looking for some kind of map to navigate this feeling. What I have found is that I am definitely not alone in this in-between space.
The Weight of a Mother Tongue
The most surprising shift for me lately has been my relationship with my mother tongue. For years, I avoided speaking it because it felt like a chore or a painful reminder of how much I had forgotten. But lately, speaking it feels like a massive emotional release. It is heavy and full of memories. When I say certain words now, I can almost taste my grandmother's cooking or feel the humid heat of a summer I barely remember. It is no longer just a way to communicate; it is a physical lifeline to a version of myself that I almost let go.
Home as a Moving Target
We are taught to think of home as a fixed point on a map. We think of it as a specific house with a specific address and a mailbox. But for those of us who have migrated, or whose parents migrated, home becomes a rotating concept. Some days, home is the smell of rain on the pavement in my current neighborhood. Other days, home is a specific song in a language I can only half-translate. My home is not a place I can put into a GPS. It is a collection of moments, smells, and sounds that I carry around in my backpack wherever I go.
Finding Peace in the In-Between
I used to think my stories had to fit into one category. I thought I had to choose a side to be taken seriously. But rethinking my storytelling roots has taught me that the in-between is a valid place to exist. You do not have to be one hundred percent from one place to be a whole person.
If you feel like you are floating between two shores, just know that the water is actually a pretty great place to be. We get to see both sides clearly. We get to pick and choose the parts of each culture that make us feel alive. It is confusing, and sometimes it is lonely, but it is also a superpower. We are the bridge builders, even if we sometimes feel like we are standing on a bridge to nowhere.
