I Was Always Meant To Be Her

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at CU Boulder chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.

I like to keep my existence neat. What I mean by this is that, when someone asks me where I’m from, I choose one place. Usually, it’s Denver, although I only lived there for two years.

Let’s get something straight. — I am not your typical American, even though I have a passport proving I was born in Maryland. However, I am also not European, even though that’s where I grew up and where much of my life remains.

I belong to everywhere. Yet, I belong to nowhere as well.

I am so haunted by my life that sometimes it doesn’t feel real, or even normal. I was given a priceless gift that many work so hard all their lives to achieve, and few ever get the opportunities I had from age five.

Yet, it was a life that I tried to hide from everyone I met for almost my entire childhood and adolescence. 

It’s hard to imagine, but all I wanted for so long was to have only lived in one place. To call one location home and never have moved anywhere, never have had to restart school, meet new people, and make new friends. I placed these types of people on a pedestal for my whole life and demonized my own life. 

I can remember very clearly, as if it just happened, walking into my first day of public school in Dallas, Texas. Moving back to the U.S. (which, in my mind, was a foreign country) was deeply frustrating for me. After all, when you grow up in the lovely town of Berne, Switzerland with the Alps in your backyard, it’s hard to see anything else as beautiful. 

When I was asked to stand up in front of my new classmates and share where I came from, I was laughed at. I wish I could go back and hug myself. Little me, just barely 10-years-old, with a slight German accent, standing there while her classmates regarded her with disgust. I wish I could tell her that being unique is completely amazing. 

But I didn’t know these things at the time. I just felt like some sort of freak. 

So, embarrassed, I made my way back to my table. The girls who had invited me to sit with them when they thought I had made a domestic move shot me glares. No one really talked to me after that. It’s hard to be the only new kid in a school where everyone else has known each other since kindergarten. Young kids just aren’t familiar with someone who’s from a different country. 

I hated my life for a long, long time. I was friends with kids who made fun of the way I dressed, the way I talked, the way I looked. No one understood the incredible life I left behind. And possibly the most ironic part was that all my friends in Switzerland were not in fact, Swiss. Growing up, some of my closest friends came from everywhere, including Kenya, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, and far beyond. And somehow, despite our differences in culture and language, we all knew that uniqueness was a part of who we were. But when I moved away, all of that changed, and I shoved down all the weird, unusual parts of my life and tried to pretend I had always lived in the U.S. Transitioning to American life in Texas was one of the messiest times of my life, and through the process, I killed everything that made me who I was. 

When I was 13, we moved again. And let me be the first to tell you, on my first day of middle school in Denver, I proudly volunteered to stand in front of my new classmates and tell everyone that I was from Texas. The approving looks followed, and my body flooded with relief. I had survived the judgment of my peers and would now be considered normal. Finally, I could be just like everyone else. 

I could pretend to be someone else. Someone who I wanted to be, who my self-conscious mind drove me to be. 

The foundation upon which I had placed my beliefs and values, the adjustments I had made to my thoughts, style, and behaviors, and the pedestal I had placed “true Americans” on were completely shattered when my dad said, “Everyone, we’re moving to Warsaw, Poland.” When I got to my high school six years ago, I stood in front of my class with the same proud, beaming glow in my eyes, and boldly told everyone, “Hi, I’m Amanda, I just moved here from Denver, Colorado.” 

The silence following that single sentence still haunts my mind.

Then, from the back of the classroom, someone murmured, “Not another American”.. And though my new classmates didn’t acknowledge his words, I heard them clear as day. I felt those words hit my soul like a sledgehammer. 

In the end, it took about five or six years, two moves, a breakup, changes in friends, and an identity crisis for me to realize that I am not hurting anyone by showing up authentically each day. My background will always be who I am, and what made me into the version of myself that I carry in every stage of my life.

As I enter my 20s, my goal is not to make who I am into a more digestible version for those around me. It took me too long to realize that it’s completely impossible for me to be anyone else. I let other people be different, and I never gave myself the same opportunity.

I grew up hiking the Swiss Alps every weekend. I spent Christmas in Paris and London. I drank mint tea with Turkish locals. I rode on camels through the dunes of Morocco. I visited Anne Frank’s apartment in Amsterdam. I ran around the first Olympic track in Greece. I watched humpback whales in Norway. I graduated from high school in Poland.

How can I forget that? How can I turn away from my life and crave someone else’s? Why should I shrink myself because of the paranoia that I am too much for other people to handle? I can’t. 

It’s not fair, not only to me, but to my parents, who sacrificed so much for me and my sister, who gave me a life most people can’t dream of having. It’s not fair to 10-year-old me, who struggled for years because she believed no one would like her if she shared her story. It’s not fair to my friends back home, who know me and love me for being from everywhere, because it encourages us to grow together. It’s not fair to the hundreds of other expat kids who feel weird because they don’t have a home base. It’s not fair to the hundreds of others I hope to inspire to move abroad because it develops an adoration for the world. 

I can never escape who I am, who I was always going to be. Now, I run towards her. I give her a hug. I tell her to sit down. I invite her to show me the beauty it is to be myself.