#thirdculturekid

Like a garden

With pieces of her heart.

Her tears, her love, her pain, her joy

Seep into the earth, the ground.

Scattered from east to west,

Here and there. 

She's been everywhere so fully,

She's not fully here.

I sometimes wonder just how different my life would be if I lived somewhere else than I do at the moment. I sometimes wonder in what ways I would have evolved differently as a person if I had lived elsewhere than the places I did. I sometimes wonder if I would be happier if I moved - sometimes I specifically wonder if I’d be happier if only I could move to California, or to Berlin, or to Singapore.

Maybe “wondering” isn’t the right word. Neither is “if”, I don’t think.

After many years of struggling with my life and learning how to live in my own shoes, I’ve grown acutely aware of the ways in which my upbringing has affected me. I’ve experienced exhilarating happiness - contentness, connection - and I’ve experienced tremendous sadness - pain, loneliness.

I know that this has shaped me into the person I, today, confidently call “myself” and “Laura”.

And yet, I’m caught up on the fact that she isn’t someone who’d exist the way in which she does if she’d gotten to be happy in her life.

Would I have been happier if we’d gotten to stay in California, where I’d established myself and spent many happy years? Likely.

Would I have been happier if we’d moved to Singapore, the country of my dreams, and I’d attended international school there instead of having to move to Germany and attend German public school? Likely.

Would I have been happier if we’d moved to Berlin, the capital of Germany and a grand, diverse city, and I’d gotten to attend American school with my friends there? Likely.

Would I still be happier right now, in this moment, and in my future high school year(s) to come, if any of these moves I’ve so yearned for became a reality? Likely.

But alas, maybe “would” is not the right word. It isn’t so. I am who I am today because my life up until now has been what it has been. In the end, realistically, I’d like to make the best out of myself and out of my life as it is now.

I’ve always been a bit of a dreamer, with my head in the clouds.

So why can’t my dreams manifest themselves on Earth for me? Why can’t I take my life into my own hands, and create something that gives me purpose and a smile on my face?

What bothers me is that these choices aren’t mine to make, never have been. Not at this point in my life, where I am dependent off of my parents’ will, my parents’ jobs, and the opportunities we have.

Just like everyone else, I have to deal with what life throws at me, I have to go with the flow. And in my case, that means my life being ripped away from me along with the many lives that I could have lived or could be living, and being physically, geographically stuck where I am at the current moment.

There are many reasons for my relative unhappiness here, I don’t want to get into the details. It has gotten better from the absolute worst, that’s why I say relative. Still, it’s enough to know that even though I try to make the best out of my life here, it’s nowhere near what I could be experiencing.

It might be a stroke of bad luck that things didn’t work out here these past... almost four years (crazy, come to think of all that time), and it might partly be due to reverse culture shock and difficulty with re-entry into one of my passport countries, and it might at this point even be because of the hate and reluctance I’ve fostered to commit to a place that has made me so unhappy, and it’s most likely an amalgamation of all of these things, but:

I’m not happy here. I feel like I’ve wasted away four, soon-to-be five years of my youth, years I’m never going to get back. (I think that’s a common phenenomen in kids and teens with mental illness, as well.)

While I know I could’ve been happy, could be happy right now, have been happy, elsewhere.

The happier I am on my trips, the sadder the return “home”.

Why is it that I’ve had to lose so many friends, and always have to try to make new ones? Why is it that I don’t have a friend group that includes me in their life like everyone else does? Why is it that I have to text and skype all of my friends, day-in, day-out, instead of getting to spend time face-to-face, out and about? Why is it that I never have anyone to hang out with or party with when I’m in the mood to enjoy my youth to its fullest? Why is it that I get to meet this wonderful gay! girl in California, and this sweet fun guy in Berlin, but can‘t keep dating them because of distance? Why is it that I have to keep switching tongues, and still get looked at strangely for mixing them up? Why is it that I have to explain myself when I’m just being myself, why is it that it’s suddenly okay to ask me “what I am”? Why is it that wherever I go, I have to choose between my friends and my homes, and will always end up unintentionally neglecting and missing all but one of them? Why is it that this heartache only increases the richer my life becomes, the more people and places grow close to my heart? Why is it that I have to watch everyone else, my friends in other places, and my friends or people here, living their life, while I’m missing out on being a part of it - missing out on living my own life?

It’s not fair. I’m jealous. And, I’m terribly heartbroken over the reality of my own life.

It takes me a while to fully accept who I am culturally. This was especially difficult when I was at a younger age. In a foreign environment, I wanted to be like the others, to fit in, to be more American and less Chinese. I still remember the day I tricked someone into believing that I’m from the United States with my perfect American accent. I was really proud as if I’ve achieved a great transformation. Although the next second when my friends started to talk about their childhood memories, I was lost again.

I thought the UK was going to be more or less like the US, since they both speak English. Of course, they turned out to be very different and I was very ignorant. I realised that I need to throw away all that I’ve acquired from the U.S. culturally in order to reconstruct my identity all over again: convert to the British accent, eat Sunday roast, watch BBC, drink alcohol till I couldn’t remember anything the next day. The assimilation process was violent. I started to feel like a container, empty by itself but can take whatever I’m asked to carry, yet deep down I was never in peace with myself. This feeling intensified when my Beijing colleagues commented on my way of doing things as a little “westernised”. Suddenly I feel that I didn’t belong anywhere anymore. I was culturally confused.