On the sense of belonging and being an expat
I have always been an outsider, as far as I can remember. No, that’s wrong — I’ve always felt like an outsider. So the concept of belonging and the meaning we attach to it has always fascinated me.
I felt like an outsider when I was a child who couldn’t make friends with the other girls because I didn’t care for what they used to talk about or do together.
I felt like an outsider when I was in high school and most of my friends sucked all the energy and knowledge out of me without giving anything back.
What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here.
- “Creep” by Radiohead was playing on rotation during my teenage years—obviously.
I felt like an outsider when I was at uni in Pavia (next to Milan, but even more upper-class) and it was full of 20-year-olds with rich parents, who always wore branded clothes and would go on winter ski trips and fancy summer holidays.
It just felt like I didn’t belong.
Then one day I went on a holiday to Sicily. After 24 hours there, I was in love. So I signed up for a Master’s degree at the university of Palermo, boarded a plane in Milan and said goodbye to the Alps.
I absolutely adored Palermo. I still do. Everyone will tell you it’s a complete mess of a city. But I consider myself to be one of the people who are blessed with the ability to see its staggering, heart-breaking, one-of-a-kind beauty. I have never loved a place the way I love Palermo. The kind of love that fills your heart and your soul with enchantment and agony at the same time.
The people I met in Sicily were ‘my people’ in a way that I had never experienced before. My Sicilian friends are not just incredibly smart and inspiring, they’re also caring and generous. They welcomed me to their family. I would sleep at their place, join them for Easter lunch, with 20 cousins and uncles and nephews — it made me so happy.
But that would also remind me of what I didn’t have. Big family, cherished traditions, real loyalty (so much loyalty) and generosity. And so eventually I’d feel like an outsider — again.
And I felt like an outsider when I moved to Australia and realised how big and small the world is at the same time. I was too much of a “citizen of the world” to hang out with Italians over there, I was not Aussie enough to hang out with Aussies. And the expat community had its challenges, mainly the fact that it revolved around getting drunk. A lot.
I live in Amsterdam now and, you guessed it — in a lot of ways, I still feel like I don’t belong. Being an expat exacerbates the idea of being an outsider and takes it to a whole-new level.
But something funny happens when you move to different countries, meet all sorts of people and go through the ups and downs of life. There’s a shift in your perception. You suddenly realise that for present you to be an outsider, past you must have not been an outsider. How would you know what it means to be an outsider if you didn’t know its opposite feeling — the feeling of belonging?
The child who couldn’t make friends with girls did make friends with boys. The high-school introspective bookworm found incredible friends who shared her passions for knowledge, music and art. Friends who travelled with her and went to gigs with her and explored Rome, Ischia and Napoli with her.
The uni girl had a breakfast crew and a lunch crew and study buddies and coffee buddies and a group of people to go out with. They even threw her a memorable surprise party and got her that green t-shirt with the black and white bow.
The girl in Sicily, well, simply met the best friends she ever had and made the happiest of memories with them.
The expat in Australia spent weekends in rented homes with groups of friends along the Great Ocean Road, had girls’ brunches and barbecues and super fun nights out with hilarious co-workers.
The expat in Amsterdam has friends from work to go out with, have coffees and fancy dinners and cinema nights with, travel to the Christmas markets with and — in quarantine times — have group calls with.
So maybe it’s the concept of ‘belonging’ that needs to be redefined.
I think that just like pretty much everything else in life, belonging is not a constant state. And it doesn’t have anything to do with always living in the same town, city, region, country.
Belonging is an infinite series of short-lived yet intense “yep that’s it” moments. Little dots on the timeline of your life that have nothing to do with geography and everything to do with time and with the connections you make. With the way you, and the people around you, at some point in time, simply, happen. And even if it’s a moment, not a place — it sure feels like home.
