Why I Stopped Trying To Fit In As An Immigrant
By: Kornelija Gruodyte
Tags: Immigration, Culture, Culture Change, Identity, Cultural Identity

Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

I remember the excitement I felt on the first day of school. My mother had helped me figure out the intricacies of the tie that accompanied my navy uniform, knotting it carefully beneath my chin.

In the car, I dutifully repeated the phrases that she’d taught me: Hello, Goodbye and Toilet. The words felt strange on my tongue, twisting differently than the flow of my native language. In my mother’s eyes, these were the essentials, the only pieces of armour she could equip me with as I ventured into the wider world.

We waited outside for a while, perched on the hard wooden benches in the wet September air. Identically dressed children fragmented the grey tarmac of the schoolyard, yelling unintelligible things at one another. The sounds they made were indistinguishable to me, a tumble of noise with no meaning. I felt my enthusiasm dimming, my five- year- old brain couldn’t comprehend the concept of language yet, but it didn’t take long before I realized that I was different than my uniformly clad classmates.

Within a week I announced to my family that I will not be attending school any longer. I was miserable, a normally chatty child, I couldn’t participate in any of the activities and making friends was difficult when you were unable to communicate with them.

Over time, the language barrier faded, the school provided the handful of immigrant children with additional support, and very quickly we all integrated into the school community. My teachers were pleased with my academic progress and praised my active participation in the lessons.

But finally being able to communicate didn’t seal the gaping chasm I felt between myself and my classmates. The looks I got when I opened my lunchbox at break times reminded me I didn’t fit quite right. Watching my friends do things I wouldn’t even dream of asking my strict immigrant parents underscored the differences in our upbringings. We sat at the same tables and chanted the same songs at assembly, but there would always be some core dissimilarities.

Going back home to the motherland didn’t bring out a sense of belonging either. At the time, I was attending school in both countries simultaneously and would fly back home twice a year to sit the required exams. I loved seeing my family members, trudging to school with my cousins and filling my plate with all of my familiar favourites. There was nothing more exciting than fully immersing myself in all of our traditions, without having to explain or justify the meaning behind them.

But even here, in this country where I was born, I felt my “otherness” cling to my skin like an invisible cloak. My friends, innately demure, couldn’t understand the openness that I fostered or comprehend my lack of regard for other’s opinions of me. My personality, in a place where appearances are often prioritized, was foreign to them.

I felt displaced, stretched across two cultures separated by an ocean. I was loved and wanted, yet felt oddly detached from either identity. As I grew older I became better at existing in that “in-between”, finding confidence in this amalgamation of an existence.

Photo by Teymi Townsend on Unsplash

After graduation, I decided to take a gap year. Hopping from country to country, observing other cultures and traditions, made it easy for me not to think about my own. Travel remedied that restlessness I felt inside, I slipped easily into each place I visited, trying on the fantasy of finding the perfect place where everything fit just right.

It was the pandemic that sent me flying back to my native land. What had started as a short summer stay stretched into a year-long visit. I hadn’t spent this much time there since I was about four years old. I found a job as an English teacher, figured out the tax system, and learned to navigate the magic infused streets of the capital.

Speaking my native language all the time was hard at first and then became easier. I learned the unfamiliar slang, I grew more comfortable making jokes and holding a conversation. I was no longer the family member that simply breezed in from abroad but had converted into a familiar face that resided there.

And yet I still felt like a visitor just passing by, as if my existence here was an anomaly. I couldn’t shake the feeling of not quite fitting in, certain situations would highlight the fact that I had been raised abroad. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I just wouldn’t fully belong.

Ultimately it was my job that highlighted that my experience wasn’t as unique as I thought. Working in a language centre full of ESL teachers, I met a lot of incredible people who had lived through similar situations. There were those that grew up in England and returned after ten years, people who had lived in Brussels and Vietnam, people who had ended up back in their birth places as unexpectedly as I had.

We discussed cultural difference between the various places over lunch, and laughed over the feeling of “ never fitting in”. We bonded over the parenting methods we had all been subjected to and could relate to the experience of drifting from place to place.

I had never felt more seen. During those little coffee breaks we created our own culture, one that only we understood.

Those of us who grew up in between cultures will never completely fit in any of them. We become the fusion of our up bringing, the places we live in, the traditions we pick up along the way. You can never fully dissever any of those aspects of yourself, you carry them with you wherever you go.

But here’s the thing. You don’t have to give up any part of yourself to belong. There is a large subculture of those who are just like you, those who know the delicate balance between cherishing your roots and staying true to yourself. Those who have dealt with constant questions about their clothes, their hair, their traditions.

The experience of growing up in places where you don’t seem to completely belong is more common than you think. There is a huge community of others just like you, a community where you don’t have to change anything to fit in.

You already have a culture, one that may look a little different from that of your parents or your friends, but one that is just as valid.

You already belong.