I've recently been thinking a lot about the concept of belonging, and my personal sense (or lack) of it. It's something that's come up time and again throughout my life, so I wanted to put it to paper. This is probably going to turn out very messy and disorganized, you've been warned...
My siblings and I are all French, but we were raised in Brazil and went through all our basic school education there. Growing up in a somewhat French bubble in Rio de Janeiro was a peculiar experience. Most of our classes were in French, with a few exceptions, and our classmates fell in a wide spectrum: the Brazilian students, amongst whom some spoke perfect French and others struggled with it; the French crowd, who didn't seem interested in learning Portuguese or integrating into Brazilian culture; and then all of the people that fell somewhere in-between. Many of the latter were half-&-half, with a Brazilian parent and a French one. They might have leaned more towards one culture or another, but they usually managed to mingle with both crowds. From my probably-distorted memory, a lot of students fell into this category. Throughout school I had friends among all of these, and I didn't think too much about it at the time.
I did however already feel one thing: that I didn't fit in. To put it simply, in all of my ~20 years living in Rio I never felt 'Brazilian enough'. The fact that I was the child of an expat family was always quite present in my social interactions inside—and especially outside—of school. From time to time these little things, tidbits of Brazilian culture that I wasn't familiar with would remind me that I was a French boy living in a foreign land. Don't get me wrong, I love Rio and have always considered it my hometown, but ironically I never felt like a local. I was also, in all fairness, a geeky, barely social kid who didn't go outside too much, so that's that (deciding whether I'm still a geeky, barely social kid is left as an exercise to the reader). I had a few, close friends, and that was enough for teenage me.
And then I left Brazil to go to university in France. You might see this coming, but I didn't fit in there either. I met some great people, made good friends and had the chance to follow a dream I had at the time: attending culinary school. Even though I've changed careers since then I'm very grateful to have had that opportunity. As a French guy, it was just quite surprising to discover that Huh, I don't relate too much to these French people... Like, at all. This new environment was much more international than my school back home, we had students from all over the world: Mexico, Lebanon, Turkey, Gabon, Russia, Taiwan, China, Denmark, you name it. And again, it was very much a social bubble of the few fortunate enough to enroll in such a school.
I really enjoyed the cultural mix of it all, it felt very much like myself. When I hung out with the French students though, I once again saw all the little ways in which they were very different than me. The language they used, with a bunch of slang unknown to me. The cultural references they had about music, movies, etc... which I lacked. I guess I realized at that time that I wasn't really French either.
While finishing my bachelor's I ended up moving to Japan. I'd always been curious about it, and sometime in my second year of classes in France I started learning the language. In order to finish my diploma I had to do a last internship working in a restaurant, and I could do it anywhere in the world. I had entertained the idea of trying to do it in Japan, but I couldn't get any business to promise me a job from abroad. They all told me they'd be happy to interview, but I had to be there already. At the time, if it wasn't for my Dad who encouraged me to just wing it, fly there and figure it out on the spot, I would've probably given up on that dream. But I followed his advice, and things did work out. With my Working-Holiday visa in hand, I managed to find a job in a few weeks time, and I ended up having an amazing experience during that year in Japan.
It's been more than 7 years since that, but I've only very recently come to realize something: I think one of the reasons I really liked Japan is because there, I was a foreigner and everybody saw me as one. That is to say, I still did not fit in but in some way it was okay because nobody expected me to! Of course they didn't, I was a gaijin (foreigner) after all. It might sound completely dumb to you, but this alignment of how I felt and how people saw me was, in retrospect, quite freeing to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I didn't want to fit in. I very much did: I made conscious efforts to not hang out exclusively with other foreigners, and I did keep on studying Japanese despite my horrific work schedule (alas, up until the very end of my stay there my Japanese remained terrible—something I'm working on today). But even though I sucked at the language and couldn't have a basic conversation, I still had a great time. I was a foreigner in a foreign land, and all was well. I did unfortunately have to return to Europe as my visa expired, and today I wonder what it would've been like if I'd stayed. I think the novelty of discovery would eventually wear out, as long-time residents of anywhere will often tell you.
After a brief stint back in France I moved to Switzerland, and started a new Bachelor's in IT with the goal of changing careers. Switzerland wasn't as much a cultural shock as Japan: everyone speaks French in Geneva, and there is a lot of common ground with French culture. Somewhere along the way there, just before I moved to Japan, I'd kind of started understanding I'm a bit queer, but I had safely ignored it for a while. Being a student again I finally started to grapple with it, and as you might imagine this whole parallel track of self-identity didn't exactly help in the 'fitting in' department. I'd been slowly realizing that I wasn't straight enough for the straights, nor queer enough for the queers. I did make some great queer friends and attended some LGBT events, but I never really felt 'part' of the community. Granted I didn't put as much effort into it as I could've, which was partly intentional. I guess I thought at some level that being the queer guy wouldn't have helped me fit in, no matter how silly that idea. I have also always felt a kind of un-bridgeable divide between my gay friends and my straight friends, very hard to see or explain but still always there.
Today I'm living in Canada. I moved here a few months ago, to be closer to friends and family. This is another thing that has become quite obvious to me in retrospect: maybe moving across a continent every 3 or 4 years is not the best remedy to feeling a lack of belonging. Who would have guessed, right? That uprooting and leaving the life and friends you've made would jeopardize your sense of community. It's a weighty downside to the traveler life, and one I consider more nowadays. Making new friends as an adult is definitely a struggle, and I'm very bad at maintaining relationships with people far away from me. I don't think my experience is unique at all: with multi-cultural families being more and more common, and with global travel being easier than it's ever been, I imagine many people must feel somewhat similarly.
Will all of this make me finally chill out and put down some roots? Honestly, I doubt it. Maybe I'm an idiot and have yet to learn my lesson despite all of this introspection, maybe I just feel like I would be missing out if I don't fly off to another country once again. Maybe all the YouTube psychologists were right and this is just a manifestation of my avoidant attachment style. The hell if I know.
At the end of the day, I never resented my circumstances nor my upbringing. I consider myself very fortunate for the possibilities I've been given; I am who I am and I think there's a beauty in coming from a multi-cultural background, even if it might lead to some personal confusion.
There's no denying that we're social creatures and thus need a community around us, but maybe we can redefine what counts as a community for ourselves. I'm still trying to do it for myself, to figure out where I fit into all of that.
I'll make sure to keep you posted when I do.