Home

The concept of ‘home’ is something I’ve always struggled with. I’ve moved around so much in my life and lived in so many places, from a very young age, the idea of having just one base or permanent place called ‘home’ is something I’ve never really experienced or understood. Just writing this post has been a struggle for me over the last few weeks to really get my thoughts out about what ‘home’ is to me.

Anyone who knows me well will know how I react to the question, “Where are you from?” or “Where’s that accent from?”. I literally cannot stand it when people presume to know where I’m from or try to wager a guess. Like it’s a funny game to them. I’ve spent my whole life trying to figure it out, mate, don’t be an arrogant prick and try to decipher my accent. You’ll never get it. What’s even funnier is my response to these people, especially to the people who really think they know and act like they’ll be able to pinpoint the exact town I’m from in this great big world. Ha. To those people, the ones I immediately dislike and have no interest in talking to, when they try to guess where I’m from, I pretend to be Canadian. That’s always fun 

The “Where are you from” question is a particularly hard pill for me to swallow when people from the UK ask me, as despite the fact that I am part British and have spent the majority of my life living here, I still have an American accent. Consequently, when people in the UK ask me where I’m from, I find myself growing immediately defensive. If I was a dog, that question would instantly be a trigger for me to start growling and all the hair on my back would stand up. I know the people who ask me don’t realise it, but it has become a bit of an insult to me after so many years of living here to have people always thinking I’m fresh off the boat from another country.  And rather than telling these innocent people where I am really, technically from (I was actually born in the USA), instead I tell them where I grew up – as that is where I really consider myself to be from.

I look them deadpan in the face and say, “I’m from here – I grew up in Surrey”.  This is 98% of the time met with confusion and certainty that I’ve somehow misunderstood their question, “Yeah, but where are you really from?” This is generally when I feel my blood pressure start to rise. All of my good friends in the UK will have witnessed this encounter between me and some innocent person just trying to spark up a conversation at least a few times. Many a guy trying to chat me up has failed epically by asking me the dreaded question of where I’m from. It’s something I need to work on, I know. I shouldn’t get so defensive over such a basic, day-to-day question, but the concept of home is more or less a great big identity crisis for me.

When I try to explain to people guessing where I’m from that I grew up in the UK, did the majority of my schooling in Surrey and have lived here for the better part of 30 years, they never believe me. “What? With that accent?” This is what pisses me off the most. This is also why, from a young age, I learned how to do a more or less flawless English accent whenever the fuck I want so people would stop pestering me about how American I sound. Or how cool the USA is, or what dumb thing whatever president we happen to have at the time has just done. An international school in Surrey, in England, yes, that’s where I got my accent.

One of the reasons this irks me so much is because, I think the place where you grew up and spent all of your formative years, should be the place where you are actually considered to be from. Not the place where you just happened to come out of your mother’s vagina. So yes, I was born in the USA. I was born in a nice little part of Maryland and from the 3 or 4 childhood memories that I have there, it was lovely. But then, just before my 7th birthday, my parents informed me that we were moving to London and it is from that point onward where the majority of my childhood memories begin.

One of the clearest memories I have from this time was that first flight to London. I remember feeling wide awake on the plane while everyone was asleep and getting up to go to the bathroom and seeing my dad stretching his legs by the toilets. I remember him taking me over to the window and lifting me up so I could peer out at the sunrise over what I think was Greenland. I’d never seen anything like it. I remember him grinning at me and saying, “We’re almost there Meg!” And then we landed at London Heathrow and my new life began…

I met someone at a party a while ago who said she too was ‘like me’ and also attended an international school growing up. She called herself a ‘Third Culture Kid’. I’d never heard that expression before and I loved it. According to Wikipedia, ‘Third culture kid (TCK) or third culture individual (TCI) are terms used to refer to children raised in a culture other than their parents’ for a significant part of their early development years. They are exposed to a greater variety of cultural influences. TCKs move between cultures before they have had the opportunity to fully develop their personal and cultural identity. The first culture of such individuals refers to the culture of the country from which the parents originated, the second culture refers to the culture in which the family currently resides, and the third culture refers to the amalgamation of these two cultures.’

Finally I found a word for what I am! I am one of these ‘kids’. Or I was when I was a kid. I guess now I’m a Third Culture Individual.