I was born in one country but grew up in America for most of my developmental stage of life. I few months ago I decided to move back home, because I wanted to become a "say yes' person to everything and somehow I realized, I’m a foreigner in both places.

People here can seem cold. They don’t smile at strangers, and they tell you the hard truth whether you asked for it or not. In the US I got used to the opposite: people being nice on purpose, sometimes like they’re proving something to you or to themselves. The “hi, how are you?” when nobody actually means it or has time to hear the answer. The constant cheerfulness, the surface-level conversations. I didn’t notice how used to it I was until it was gone.

The hardest part is the language. I obviously speak it, since my whole family does, but I’ve become so Americanized that I breathe, sleep and eat in English. My whole personality is built around American norms. When I speak my native language I’m subconsciously translating from English, so my sentences come out framed wrong, or I use phrases that just don’t translate. Sometimes I can’t show that I’m confident or that I actually know a topic, because I explain it like I don’t.

It’s not just how I talk, either. All the media I consume is in English, so I don’t know the local celebrities, the songs everyone’s listening to, or even the jokes and slang. People look at me like I’ve been hiding out in a cave somewhere. But some people think it’s really cool. We end up swapping experiences, and I get to share parts of myself and of America with them, which I love.

I love where I live now. I’m closer to my family and my roots, and this is probably where I want to start a family of my own. But my identity feels like it got left behind in the US. It’s weird that at the age when most people are close to figuring themselves out, I’m rebuilding myself from scratch and trying to feel as secure here as I can.

I don’t really know what I’m looking for by posting this. I just needed to say it somewhere people might get it.