Too much of one thing to belong there. Too much of another to belong here. The in-between has no address.
In this reflection we sit with the homesickness that has no cure.
You are from somewhere. On paper. There is a place that claims you and a culture that shaped you. But when you go there, something does not fit. You are too different. Too much time somewhere else. The belonging you expected to feel is not there.
And where you are now does not feel like home either. The culture you live in every day still treats you as other. The small reminders that this was not built for you. The subtle and not-subtle ways you are marked as from elsewhere even when elsewhere does not claim you either.
This is the in-between. The third space. The place where people who exist between worlds learn to live without landing anywhere.
It can be lonely. The longing for belonging that has no clear destination. The homesickness for a home that may not exist. You see people who fit somewhere and wonder what that feels like. To just be from a place. To be unquestionably of it.
But the in-between is also its own place. Not a failure to belong somewhere else. A location in itself. Populated by others who learned to build homes that travel with them rather than waiting for one to be provided.
Home might not be a place for you. It might be a people. A practice. A feeling you create rather than find. The belonging you could not locate in geography might exist in connection instead.
Some people carry home inside them. They had to learn this because nowhere else would hold them. It is a skill born of necessity. An adaptation that becomes a strength.
If nowhere feels like home, you are not broken. You are just from the in-between. That is a real place too. It has no map, but it has plenty of residents.
You are not the only one here.
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