The story of a foreigner

Isabella Madrid Malo
a Few Words
Published in
1 min readJan 29, 2023

Being a foreigner

is not for everyone

Leaving home, roots, comfort, past

Everyone says it must be hard

what they don't understand

is leaving home

to the other side of the world

means entering freedom

Nausea

Freedom is having endless possibilities

and not knowing what to do with any of them

it’s constant uncertainty

of the unknown

the next steps

I cannot keep up with the evolution of those who stay

and those who stay cannot keep up with my evolution

and that is, in simple terms, the biggest struggle

of being

a foreigner

A mismatch of my past and present

I was born in a community of people

warmth

friendships

the more I come back

the less I connect

The more years outside of my roots

the harder to feel like I

belong

to a community

a group

a culture

Everyone comes and goes

No one settles

Loneliness becomes the protagonist of the story as a

foreigner

Becoming masters of solitude suddenly becomes

of the most important skills

for survival

and I simply feel like

I’m drowning on my own

Bogota, Colombia: A city in which I once belonged, but today feels like a hybrid creature in between warmth, food, and family

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Isabella Madrid Malo
a Few Words

I write about what being a human feels like. Raw, real, naked.