A human kaleidoscope

The impossibility of categories and names.

Image of me by Beatrici Photography

They call me Third Culture Kid. But the label is small and insufficient.

I'm existing in this space of the uncategorised. What is the word I'm looking for?

The impossibility of these categories and names.

Still, the need to have a name, something to call mine, to identify with. The need only the ones growing up in the 'in - between' can understand.

The pain of not belonging is visceral but nobody sees it.

There are multiple identities that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Sometimes like weights, sometimes like wings. I have accepted them all, each one beautiful and impossible in their own way:

The sad side of things:

What's the word for: I was born in one country, my parents immigrated to another, I don't feel at home in neither of the two. I don't fully belong to my motherland, I don't fully belong to the country that raised me. So I added a third place to my 'homes'. Moved to a third, neutral ground.

I feel like I only belong with people who also don't really belong anywhere. People call me different things, try to guess where I'm from, as if it's a fun game, stereotyping me, fitting me in one of their boxes and I am frustrated when I can't give them what they want. I am tired of having a complicated answer to a simple question:

Where are you from?

And while most days I'm anchored and calm in who I am. Some days it still gets me: The things that I am not. Some days I wish I had one home, one language, my mother's tradition to keep me safe. Some days I want to belong so hard that it hurts in my lungs.

What's the word for not knowing your ancestral heritage, what is the word for not having a specific community, what is the word for being many things and never quite sure what to call yourself, what is the word for having many cultures melt together inside of you, for the confusion that comes from saying the word 'home'

what is the word for envying people who call a group 'their people', what is the word for not having a people, a category to put yourself in? What is the word for longing to belong?

Home is nowhere. Sometimes weight.

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The wonderful side of things:

Being uncategorised means being free. I am proudly creating my own culture, my own community out of people who are birds with no place to land, people with more than one passport and no national identity.

My mind is more colourful, more adaptable, my view of the world wider and deeper. I am used to 180 paradigm shifts. I am more inquisitive and daring, I have words to dream in and write and speak in many languages. Uncertainty has always been my companion, so I hold my convictions loosely. I don't cling to traditions, because none really fit me growing up between two cultures.

Most days I feel rootless but free. Because I grew up without solid roots, I have always questioned and rejected many things served to me.

I am more free than most people I meet. Free to choose. Free to speak the truth. Free to dare. Free to be vulnerable. Free to question. Free to accept differences. Free to build my own path, tradition and culture, free to not use the template that was given to me. Free to sit in the in between, in the grey, alone, misunderstood. I'm ok with it because that's the space I've existed in all my life. The in between. Not one thing or the other, but both and neither. Something in the middle. I am a unique blend with many flavours, not easy to define, not smooth, not simple, but delicious.

Instead of one culture, one language, one tradition, one home, one heritage, I have many. Everything is doubled, trippled, multiplied. My life is richer for it, it is more, not less.

Home is everywhere. Sometimes wings.

If you like what you read, it would mean the world to me if you could share my writing with others x