Heyooo, my name is Laura, I’m 17 years old, n I’m from... *insert awkward pause in which the other conversational party questions my mental adeptness while I suffer a minor everyday existential crisis*
The truth is, there isn’t any one place I could name that would do such a complex question justice. Why do people even ask us where we are from? (Such an annoying question!) Surely it must have a deeper meaning, since, for most people - for First Culture Kids, that is - the place you are “from” is an indication of your culture - the lens through which you view the world, your set of beliefs, values, and life experiences which shape you into the person you now essentially are.
It is a means of understanding someone.
That isn’t exactly wrong.
After all, the environment we grow up in affects our development at fundamental levels (and continues to do so) - and for TCKs, this environment, this culture, just so happens to not be a singular place, but the change between them, many of them - many places which we not only adapt to, but absorb as our own, making them all a part of ourselves, but never fully identifying with any one place or culture. That’s because, for us, one place isn’t our whole world. One place alone can’t be our home. Our home is something we carry deep within us, in our past memories, both the cheerfully cherished and the painfully hidden, in all the friends we’ve made and lost, in all the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and feelings our young, untouched selves have been exposed to in this world, as well as where we stand on the globe right now, and where we have yet to travel. To me, home is more of a feeling.
Moi, personally, I don’t want to confine myself to a single corner of the earth. I wasn’t born to stay in one spot, never venturing past the horizon. I want to embrace the world as it is, and for that, I have to see it for all it is. It is so much more than what one single human being can ever experience. It’s not like I ever had a choice in the matter - I was born into this lifestyle, and this is who I am today. It hasn’t always been easy, not at all, but it is just another story of another human being of the 7 billion human beings on this planet - not counting the many past souls.
Still, I hope to absorb as much as I can in this temporary existence, and I hope to make this world a more kind, accepting, open place. For everyone - after all, we are all the same at our core.
But before all else, I hope to reach whomever I can with my story. I’m Laura, I’m 17 years old, and I am a Third Culture Kid. Here is my story.
From the very beginning, I was split in two. I was born to a Spanish mother and a German father in a small town in Southern Germany. My very first language was Spanish, although I soon grew up bilingually (Spanish-German), and I’ve always had strong emotional ties to the country - my entire close, loving extended family lives there, and as a little girl, we visited frequently. My first plane flight took place when I was 2 months old, in the womb I had almost been born in France. My sweet abuelitos’ house, with a large backyard, many trees offering shade from the scorching Spanish sun, and a cooling pool surrounded by Roman, Arab - essentially Spanish - architecture, close to Madrid, became home from a early age. Till today, it has been the only constant in my life, even though I have never formally lived there. My family’s primary culture - much like our culinary habits! - is Spanish, you could say, though the mix is undeniable.
That little German town I was born in is quite an idyllic place, and as a child I adored it, but I no longer harbor many memories from that place. With very few loose ties there, I’m largely unattached - my father is from another city by Lake Constance, and my only known relatives there were my grandparents.
When I had just entered 1st grade, at six years old, came the announcement of our move to California. My parents claim I never wanted to move, holding onto my little town like dear life. Nowadays, I could never imagine that. That little girl inside me has all but vanished, swept away forever by the tides of the Pacific Ocean.
We went to international school in Mountain View - GISSV - which brought with it annual changes, saying goodbyes to endless now-dear friends at the end of every school year, and wiping away the tears to welcome new ones with open arms once we were back from summer break. When my best friend unexpectedly moved after 5th grade, it shook my world up like an earthquake. Still, to me, that school was a stable sense of community, and still is today. I cherish my school, where I spent most of my elementary and middle school years, so so close to heart. I remain in close contact with many friends I made there - as well as with my best friend, six years long-distance going strong! - even though lots of us are at different schools or in different cities and countries now. I had the chance to visit this past summer at the beginning of 11th grade, and am going to visit again this summer at the beginning of 12th, an opportunity for which I am so relieved, grateful, and delighted that it cannot be put into words. Who woulda thought that any high school student would voluntarily choose to spend their vacation at school?
California is the place of which I can confidently say comes closest to home for me, and has had the most impactful influence on my cultural identity. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Silicon Valley - a cultural bubble in itself!
Surrounded by American, Mexican, Argentinian, Guatemalan, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Indonesian, Filipino, Iranian, Indian, Pakistani, Polynesian, Spanish, German, Bulgarian, Greek etc. etc. etc. friends, traditions, languages, foods, and simply... cultures - as well as the notable Silicon Valley subculture stemming from high-tech companies, haha -, I soon began to first feel at peace, then as one with my new surroundings. To this day, I feel like I fit in most in this colorful array of many cultures, as well as the general American or Californian culture which results out of these, unifying all of us. Ideally. In that little bubble, it did, does feel that way...
Such a high degree of identification, even if not absolute, is rare to come by. It’s kinda funny, but I will always accept California as a home regardless. I have a real sense of belonging there.
Although I didn’t speak English when we first moved to the US, within the first three months, I picked up enough to be fluent in conversation. Within less than year, I was fully fluent, and within two years, I had turned English into my “first” language. Now, I call myself a native speaker, as English is the language in which I can express myself with the most ease, and truest to the contents of my heart and mind. Though my Spanish and German are fluent, as well, I have more difficulty wielding them as mine with confidence. I also speak French as a fourth language.
I think that alone should tell you just about how much I - and my siblings - were “americanized”, as my European parents like to put it. To this day, my little brother, little sister, and I, speak only English to one another. Spanish to my mom. A mix of everything amongst family.
Even in regards to Spanish - I remember my mom once flipping out at the Mexican church we went to when my sister, who sung in choir, pronounced the beginning consonant of “zapato” and “cielo” as an “s” instead of a “th” like in Mexican Spanish as opposed to Spanish Spanish! How could you blame us, though? We, as children, only seek belonging and acceptance from our peer group. We wanted to feel the same as them. So even though we were blancas, we seeked that in the familiar Hispanic community - where we were more or less rejected. We did find a couple good Latino family friends, though, and for them I am eternally grateful. Now, our family cuisine involves just about as much traditional Mexican food as Spanish food.
Though my other personal favorite remains Japanese cuisine. Mochi has to have the softest spot inside me... ha, get it? We used to go to Hawaii for vacation twice every year, and it became like a second home to me. Mochi ice cream is really popular there, and it’s remniscent of hot days under the deadly tropical sun, right by the beach, barefoot on the sand, grass, and pavement by the little local shave ice store. I also love udon. It’s connected with the beautiful cherry blossoms of a San Francisco spring, and the comfort of a steaming hot bowl of noodle soup. It’s homey.
I even had udon upon hearing the news that we were moving away from California - it was the only thing that could stop my hysterical sobbing that evening. We were moving “back” to Germany, to a city I’d never been before; Stuttgart.
Gosh, that evening was only the beginning of it all. I was 13 years old, finishing 7th grade, just beginning my exciting teenage years, crushing on girls and guys alike, and spending more and more time with my friends, as well as with my teammates in competitive swimming, my passion, at SCSC. The next couple months, which would be my last couple months in California, would spell the beginning of a disaster which was to follow. I didn’t know how to handle such a move. I was about to lose my entire life as I knew it, and I did NOT want to start a new chapter. I was not ready to let go, and I didn’t let myself do so healthily, either.
Instead, I thought that it would be more painless for everyone involved if only I distanced myself. I didn’t even tell my friends at first, I kept it a well-hidden secret; I started isolating myself, acting like an outsider in my class at school, which was like a second family to me. I forced myself to stop liking a guy who really liked me back, knowing nothing would ever come of it. It hurt to hear everyone talking about 8th grade with such excitement, knowing they were looking forward to a future without me. It hurt to know I was looking at the faces of people I loved, that I would soon not be able to see but over the crappy quality of a Skype video. It hurt to know, or at least to think, that with the physical vanishing of people and places from my life, I would not be allowed to love them any longer, or to be loved by them. I didn’t want them to love me. I didn’t want it to hurt for anyone else.
All I did in the end was hurt everyone more. By not allowing myself, or others, to acknowledge and grieve the losses, I was denying our relationship and the meaning it had to us, and denying the emotional bonds I had to California. I was moving on before the plane had even flown, and I wasn’t going to shed a tear while saying my goodbyes. It wasn’t true to myself, it wasn’t true to the places and people I loved, it wasn’t true to truth itself.
It’s important to let yourself feel the sadness - and not just the sadness, but every emotion your heart may come across. It’s the only way to get “rid” of them. Grief that’s pushed away comes up later as unresolved grief, harder to deal with than before. Now, I try to let myself be vulnerable in every moment, even if I know it’s going to get me hurt. I’d rather embrace the world as it is, including all the pain, than close myself off from it completely, never letting love touch me, simply to protect me from everything that may come with it.
It’s too late for that now. I wish I could just talk to 13-year-old me, bestow upon her all that I’ve realized since then. Give her a hug. She needed it. She needed it even more later. Honestly, I need it now, too.
Life involves changes. Changes can be painful. But we, as TCKs, we are born to adapt. Uncertainty is difficult, but things will figure themselves out. We keep going. We persevere. We mold to the tides of the oceans we swim.
When we moved to Germany, I tried my goddamned hardest to make friends - at German public school. To integrate myself into the culture. To NOT stand out. To be one of them, even though deep inside, I felt so out of place. I even did my research on Germany, cultural differences to the US, and German teens online! Can you imagine? Feels ridiculous now.
In short, I was met with social rejection. Nobody treated me with interest or particular friendliness. My attempts to socialize were taken either as bragging and supposed superiority, from the very moment I said where I was from, or as different and weird. To this day, I haven’t quite figured out why. I think I might have been intimidating, but then again, I understood my new classmates as little as they understood me. I assume it was a combination of bad luck, of already established social circles of my new peers, of the rather closed-off German culture and its different ways of approaching others which I had trouble adjusting to, of gossip, and of my own lying to myself and failure to recognize the tall, cold cement walls I’d build up around myself to “protect” myself from any further hurt.
I’ve lost so many best friends in my lifetime, but not any of them hurt me in the long run as much as my ‘best friend’ in 8th grade - a Swiss girl who had just moved from South Korea, with whom I bonded over our mutual experience and our shared love of Asian food - who ended up completely ignoring my existence after an argument and leaving me for two of her other friends. It fell apart just as quickly and intensely as we’d bonded.
To top it all off, I’d had an accident in P.E. at the end of 7th grade in California, leaving me with whiplash and ultimately forcing me to quit competitive swimming due to failure to cure it through physical therapy both in the US, Spain, and Germany - my only escape, my passion. Not that it mattered much, having lost my team, and being stuck with my sister’s younger friends in our new swim team, as I couldn’t swim to the fullest of my potential.
Life in California had moved on without me, and life here in Germany sure as hell didn’t want me.
I yearned to go back to Spain like in the summer of 2015, stuck in a limbo of transition, taking flight after flight up into the clouds, away from my worlds, in a place that could be a little something like home. I missed udon, badly. And mochi ice cream, from the Hawaii I’d semi-grown up in from all our vacations. It’s always the little things. Mostly the food.
Ironically enough, around Christmas of that same year, I fell into a deep hole of anorexia and depression, as a coping mechanism for the move. (trigger warning!)
All I remember of that time in my life is that it was cold. More cold than I had ever felt, in more ways than one. And it was so gray, so monotone, so hopeless, so dull, so lifeless, so lonely, so cold.
I spiraled downwards quickly, seeking escape in starvation, obsessing myself with the perceived flaws of my outer appearance, finding something to hate about myself everyone I looked - not just externally, but internally as well. Kpop, music, which had been my only escape and comfort until then, turned against me with its beauty ideals. Soon, not even music could get me through the days anymore.
I was sure that I didn’t belong, and that nobody cared about me, and that it would be better if I just disappeared again.
I completely lost myself to an anorexic mindset, hell-bent on losing weight, on destroying myself. I’m not sure if my depression developed out of it, or if my anorexia was a coping mechanism for the depression. The latter is most likely.
Over the course of a few months, I had lost an alarming amount of weight. I was pulled out of school for an indeterminate amount of time, and forced to the hospital and psychiatric ward multiple times. The next few months at home were worse than pure hell. I don’t want to relive it, it seems like an entirely different life, like I am viewing it through some higher being’s eyes, yet I remember it so vividly. So vividly burning to ashes. During that time, the thoughts and feelings I had pushed away finally caught up to me. I sat at home on the floor, frail figure, childhood doll and photo albums in hand, silently crying hot tears over a past I’d lost forever. This was when I finally reached out to my friends in California, coming clean to them. Telling them it had all been an act, and that I did still care about them, and missed them. In a way, I wasn’t only telling them, but myself, too. That acceptance was key, and the reassurance and care from my friends too, even though it did nothing to halt my rapidly worsening eating disorder.
I was so underweight, my life was in danger. I experienced unpredictable emotions, scary outbursts of rage, all followed by quiet, quiet, deep, piercing sadness. I didn’t recognize myself, nor did I have any remaining sense of identity. I simply knew what had passed, and it seemed so far away, out of reach. Luckily, I managed to get a spot for stationary therapy at a clinic, and begun recovery. After nearly four months there, I was released, healthy weight again, having finally accepted and talked about my issues. It was enormously hard. The therapists there probably felt the same; I don’t think they’d ever dealt with a patient like me before, but they did their best to understand how a Third Culture Kid’s brain works, how my experiences have impacted my current state, and me as a person.
The book “Third Culture Kids: Growing up Among Worlds” by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken helped me finally put a word to my experiences - it finally gave me something to fully identify with. If you’re a TCK, or know a TCK, I highly recommend the read!! It is so insightful, and a lifesaver for TCKs all over the world. It built us a community. It must be my favorite book. *clears throat* Anyway.
By then, it was time for me to start anew, yet again. I decided to switch schools, seeing as my experience then had been so negative, and I didn’t want anyone I was to meet to know me yet. I was faced with the same challenge of establishing a new social circle. It was a month into 9th grade when I joined.
It took me a while, but I found a friend, who eventually left me because my depression was too much for her. Now that the eating disorder had gotten better, I was struggling with intense depression and suicidal thoughts. Nevertheless, I kept fighting and trying to apply what I had learned in therapy and through my past experiences.
Eventually, toward the end of 9th grade, I made a few friends that I’m still friends with till today.
One of them is my close friend, someone I care about wholeheartedly and feel a deep connection to. She’s probably the only one here that I feel can understand me at a fundamental level, and I love her more than words can say.
Two others are close friends, as well, whom I trust and love so so much, as well, but they don’t live where I do. They live in Berlin, and one of my TCK friends from California actually introduced them to me over WhatsApp - they’re his friends from German-American school there. Both are American/Canadian. Even though they live elsewhere, we’re in intense contact, they’re a lifeline to me and I intend to always be there for them, too.
My other friends from California are still a presence in my life, as well! In this age of the internet, moving doesn’t mean a permanent goodbye, even if the dynamics of the relationship do change with distance. But there’s something my best friend and I have always said: True friends will stay with you even if it gets dark.
It is only this school year, in 11th grade, that I’ve been fostering the budding beginnings of new friendships, and expanded my social circle. I feel much better, even though I do still struggle, especially with fear of the future what with college approaching and me not knowing where to go. I often feel an itch to leave where I am at the moment, to go someplace new; wanderlust that’s only quenchable by wandering. It doesn’t help, being scared of impermanence and permanence alike. I don’t want to let go of what I’m attached to, and I especially don’t want to let go of people. They’re a part of home to me, and I love so much. But I can’t stay in one place forever.
These past few years have been lonely, and I’ve developed a deep-rooted fear of abandonment from the experiences of my TCK life as well as past relationships. It impacts my relationships and my behavior very much today, and I can’t help but fear that the fear is real. Doesn’t the TCK life imply it?
I used to hate this place. Germany. And all it stood for, to me. I refused to accept it as my own - I still do, to an extent. I certainly don’t feel “German”, but the hostility was on another level. Who could blame me, after all the reverse culture shock and bad experiences upon arrival here? I still miss California. I still feel happier in sunnier, warmer, more open places. But you know what? That doesn’t have to stop the appreciation that I can feel for the here and now. As a matter of fact, such acceptance is necessary in order to appreciate your present moment!
I was stuck in the past for a long time, for good reason. I was struggling to understand who I was. Even though I refused, for so long, to acknowledge Germany or my life here as a part of what “home” constitutes to me, I’m finally starting to give in, to understand that this place can be a small but significant part of what home is to me, without erasing or replacing any other place from my heart, and without invalidating my identity as American or Spanish or a TCK.
All these things, they exist inside me simultaneously. That’s the beauty of it all - I’m more than just one thing, I’m many and none at once. It’s not that I’m not “enough” anything - I’m more than “enough” in myself! I’m a mishmash of cultures, and I love every single one of them, even the ones that aren’t directly - or even indirectly! - my own.
To be a TCK is to open your heart to the world - to have to open your heart to the world in order to open your heart to yourself.
With this blog, and with sharing this messy, messy story - just as messy as me!! - I want to open myself up to the world.
Above all, I want to embrace my community - the Third Culture Kid community. My story is just one of many.
This blog entry ended up incredibly long, I’m really sorry. I’ll keep it shorter in the future. I’m not even sure if it’s fully coherent, but it is my story, told with blatant honesty and vulnerability.
I’m not even sure if anyone will ever read this!! But hell, it’s out there. I’m out here.
I just want you to know, I’m always here. Right here on Planet Earth with you, and my heart, mind, and inbox are always open if anyone wants to talk. I’d be happy to!
I love you all, my TCKs, my humans. You’re just as valid as everyone else, even if you feel different, even if you are different in this sense. You belong in this world!
In the end, that’s what I’ve decided to learn from my story as a TCK, and as a human being. To be there for others, and to help and understand each other in our journeys, wherever they may take us. We’re on this plane for the long flight~ ✈️
I’m Laura, and this is where I’m from. So, in a whole new sense - Where are you from? ❤️
