I'm always guaranteed to live in one state: constant change. Some people reminisce on their hometowns with a love that it took their whole lifetime to develop. They look back fondly on little cottages, convenience stores, shorelines, and even specific trees and buildings. They know exactly where they stand in those communities and how to answer the questions, "Where do you belong?" and, "Where are you from?"
I don't. I never have.
When you travel a lot, nothing seems to stay when you're always on the go. I've visited over 20 countries and all of the continental United States plus Hawaii. Relocating between my university and my house feels like second nature. Although I was born in the United States, I first traveled to Taiwan with my mother at the age of 1 and moved continually between the two countries. The summer before I finally had to settle in the United States to begin preschool and all of the years of schooling to follow, my parents packed my family into a car full of miscellaneous clothing, equipment, and food to take a two-month car trip for their last hurrah. If only they had known that it would not actually be the last time when we traveled.
Summers, school breaks and even long weekends were spent running off to wherever we could: Austin, a few hours away, Disney World, 20 hours away, or Venice, 13 hours' worth of flights away. It felt like we were constantly leaving for elsewhere, wherever that was this time. We wanted to see the world, so we did.
My parents worried that I'd abandon our culture and our language. I didn't. They, in addition to cooking Taiwanese cuisine almost daily and mandating the use of the Chinese language at home, integrated Taiwanese culture into our adapted American lifestyle. Instead, I worried about not fitting in anywhere. As a child, my classmates made fun of me for liking "typical Chinese music."
They declared that the lunch that I brought smelled funny (it seems that Chinese takeout was not quite so popular back then), so I begged my mom to let me bring a sandwich instead of homemade dumplings. I tried to act as "American" as possible, trying and failing to belong. I realized that my personality had already been shaped by the culture of my other home and by all of the different scenes that I'd been exposed to around the world. I never had to fear losing my culture because it's a potluck of different ones from everywhere. It's mine.
I cherish this double life. I once resented missing out on time with friends over summers spent in Taiwan, but I eventually remembered how much I love receiving an annual dose of the newest music and books there. I have a home in two countries on different sides of the planet. I fell in love with languages, people, and coffee shops around the world. Working to reconcile my Taiwanese and American lifestyles once led to the fear that my identity would never blend in with those of others, but why does it need to blend with anything?
I used to hate the thought of never belonging anywhere, but from walking through the hidden beauty of Antelope Canyon to playing on sandy beaches in Paradise Island, from running through airports everywhere and learning travel techniques by heart to falling in love with the architecture and miracles and people of the world, I finally know that we don't have to belong anywhere. We were never meant to fit in.
