When I was only 17 years old, I embarked on my college journey abroad. As a Puerto Rican—born and raised—I didn’t expect things in the States to be too different from my home life. I was nervous: it was the first time I was leaving home, and I was going to be in the middle-of-nowhere Ohio where I knew no one. I anticipated to fit in perfectly with the American way of life, yet I ended up finding myself stuck in an ambiguous situation.
Being from Puerto Rico, I have American citizenship, which makes me American, but not coming from the mainland and speaking a different language makes me foreign to Americans. I was suddenly thrust between borders in a way that left me outside both the American group and the international group. I struggled to adapt to Americans, but going to a predominantly white campus, I found myself having to try and assimilate to an American culture which felt much more foreign to me than I had expected.
This is not to say that my journey’s been lonely. In my three years in college, I have made some great American friends and even though we still surprise each other with our cultures, I thought my home in Ohio would be among Americans.
It was not until my junior year that I began to connect more with international students. Most of the international students on campus aren’t Hispanic, so I thought it would be much harder to connect with them than with Americans. I was surprised to find how much we all had in common. By finding ourselves in a foreign land, speaking a different language and having to quickly adapt, my international friends and I bonded over common struggles.
I feel so blessed to have met my international friends because they gave me a home away from home. As much as I love my American friends, it’s my international friends who really get the struggle of being homesick and feeling like an outsider at times. Moreover, I’m incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to have friends from all over the world because they give me a glimpse into their cultures and present me with new perspectives of the world.
Being stuck between borders is difficult at times because I feel that I don’t really fit in either way. It can get lonely, but I am beyond thankful to my amazing American and international friends for welcoming me into their lives and giving me homes away from home. My American friends have even given me physical homes away from home by welcoming me into their homes during school breaks, and my international friends have given me a home in which I don’t have to struggle alone.
I still struggle with finding my place and being able to define myself while I’m abroad, yet being stuck in the middle gives me a unique perspective between multiple cultures where I find myself connecting and differing from all sorts of people. Despite some days wishing I had a more defined cultural identity in Ohio, I feel honored to be blessed with friends from both sides of the spectrum who travel this journey with me.
