Read This If You Have A Toxic Relationship With Belonging

When I was 15, I lived in the USA for a year through an exchange program. I came back home having lost the ability to pronounce ‘Water’ correctly and with an undeniable infatuation with hair ribbons, Swedish fish, and High School Musical, desperate to recreate one home.

In America, I was exotic and popular. In Jordan, I was ordinary and odd.

Since then, I have had a toxic relationship with belonging. I felt like I was floating, like I could no longer fit in the place that I once belonged. I never wanted to stay, and ever since I knew I had a choice, my instinct to run was a force stronger than any sense of belonging I could pretend to have. I looked for places to run to, places I believed would give me the chances I craved, places where peculiarity was celebrated and ambitions were not mistreated as delusions. And I looked for ways I could do it—I used every trick in the book, promising my parents extraordinary in the process without really knowing how you even do extraordinary.

And here I am, many years after leaving, somehow having integrated in the process. Their idioms and anthems inhabit my ear. The afternoon teas and shepherd’s pie and even scones that bake in my oven as if the recipes ran through generations. The cities I know by foot as if they were hometowns, no longer a tourist. Classic jokes like they were my own. Memories that now embrace years of youth as if this is where I have always been.

While trying to belong, I learned to live. Live foreign. I learned that I can easily mold and adapt into the circumstances. I learned to make friends in the loneliest and quietest places. I learned how to adapt to strangers, like the barista at the Costa on 12 Shires Lane or Pete and Annette who lived down the road and took me for fish and chips and people watching every Sunday for a whole year. l can chat for hours with the most random of people anywhere and everywhere.

I found ways to survive a pandemic alone, mainly in the company of my books. I found comfort in baking, somehow painting has become a hobby too. I also found that nothing feels more liberating than dancing in my kitchen at midnight. I now know that I can drive for hours whenever I want and stay somewhere random by the coast simply because I want to. I learned that family can be found in friends from the most assorted cultures and languages. I also learned that loneliness can come in different patterns, and that pain exists in multitudes, but I also learned that I can survive with and without the people that cause it. I learned how to survive; broken pipes and pink bath bubble floods and fake-tarantula panic attacks and indoor fires and car thefts and questionable break ins. The plumber on my speed dial and the mechanic who still can’t pronounce my name turned pillars in every hardship. I learned that being strong has many meanings and that being independent isn’t an option. But I also learned that being strong and being independent does not mean it is all that you need to be all the time.

I also learned that leaving does not solve everything. That you shouldn’t leave to run away and that as long as you are, you will never really belong. I learned that habits do not simply die because I decided to live elsewhere.

I learned how to continue to give even when it’s not reciprocated; my mother’s ‘this is who we are’ resonates every time I bake and feed others. I realized I don’t have to make up an excuse when I go to pray—five times a day—and that even if it’s in the middle of a restaurant in Birmingham, my prayer clothes don’t need to hide in shame. I realized there is fasting in almost every culture, and the more you say it, the more feasts you get invited to. I learned that I don’t need to hide my “no alcohol” policy, or even tweak it in the slightest in order to dance like no one’s watching; and trust me, people will still want to go out with you if you don’t. I also found a way to ask them to take their shoes off at the door—once you do, you’ll never have to ask twice! I realized you don’t have to be silent if you disagree, that it is okay to say what you think, even if it rocks the boat a bit. I realized that I did not need to be quieter or less affectionate or hold my tears when they’re on edge because it’s easier to fit that way. I also learned that you don’t have to conform to set expectations and timelines, like love, marriage and kids, degrees and hobbies—you have a choice, and you get many chances, and you don’t need to compromise what you want to make it fit with what is there.

I wear what makes me happy, be it high fashion, secondhand, or passed on from friends—sometimes it’s traditionally embroidered and sometimes it comes from ASOS. I don’t enforce a trend to fit. I don’t try to buy more than I can afford or own what I can’t keep. I have the road rage of an Arab and the road discipline of a Brit. I don’t keep my unpopular feelings towards Sunday roasts secret and I despise marmite. I chant to Fairuz in the morning and Coldplay in the afternoon and Quran before I go to sleep. I embrace the stillness of my Beaumont neighborhood while at times craving the car honks at midnight or the shouting of the street vendors across the city center. There’s beauty in the chaos I wanted to leave, after all.

For so long, I had a hard time translating these feelings, verbalizing the confusion. But something happens to you when you leave your first home. It complicates you. Not immediately; it takes a few good years. At some point, the road gets blurry and it no longer becomes about chasing after that dream or goal; it’s no longer a tick box preceding your ‘return’. You snap in half; you create two lives, two stories and two sets of loved ones that make it incredibly difficult to alternate and incredibly difficult to choose. These feelings almost alienate you because you’re always missing something, whichever side you’re on.

But regardless of that, I owe so much to leaving. Because I know I wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t. I integrated and disintegrated, so much so that I have reintegrated in the process. I realized that I am now made of pieces that don’t look like they fit together and yet somehow, they do. Like one cannot exist without the other, all molding into this singular entity that doesn’t fit exclusively anywhere and yet somehow belongs.

Everytime I fly back, both here and there, I ask for a window seat. I tend to hide myself in that far corner and often avoid conversation (except if it’s the cute occasional Grandad with lots of stories). That 5-hour flight in between my two timelines puts everything on hold for a moment; my story pauses, my feelings park in the corner, and I reminisce. From up there, the sight of the rainy clouds in the West, and the clear skies of the East, the green hills versus the sandy dunes, are both familiar. They help me breathe. And I find comfort in both skies, no matter the color, no matter the ambience. I have a home.

And I realized that I finally belong, even when I don’t fit in.

And that, in itself, is extraordinary, Mom.