We, 3rd Culture Kids

It’s funny, growing up in a place that isn’t supposed to be ‘yours’, your mirror- people that do not look like you. And so I grew, my skin one colour, my mind another, my soul- something in between.

We were children, wiser than the world. We didn’t see the things that separated us, only the things that brought us together. We saw smiles and eyes and beautiful dreams.We played games from different places, and some we liked less, some we liked better.We ate food from different places. But it didn’t feel like a meal from a different country, simply a meal we would have at so-and-so’s house.We knew people from different places. And the more we grew close with the people, the more their places became a little our own.

We, the 3rd culture kids. The world is our home.

And then they started teaching us about race and colour and it was so alien, something so ‘other’, a terrible thing that happened far away. But they were talking about the everyday. They were talking about us. They were talking about hate.

The only hate that we knew was because someone said something about another, not because of race, of country, of colour..And then I grew up. I moved. I learnt. I discovered how precious my childhood had been.

When I moved I was placed in a box. ‘You are white!’ they said. White skin. Brown eyes. You are white! And it didn’t matter that where I was born, where I’m meant to belong, I’m told I look different. Slightly too dark, my features too strong. Where I grew up, I was the outsider too. They touched my cheeks, stroked my brown hair, called me blonde. But it didn’t matter, it was all that I knew, it was home, and my mirror were people that were different too. I grew up walking the lines between all the the things I was and was not. My blood-one culture, my language another, my home- a third…My friends- a fourth, my food, clothing- a fifth, and so on and so on and so on.And that was the norm. We, the 3rd culture kids. We were all so different, but also the same, we had that beautiful bond. We came from all sides of the world but we shared a home.

But here- I am white. And that horribly difficult question:

Where are you from?

It’s so hard to explain when your whole self is built around fractions of places that you take on from people that also never really belonged to the times and spaces that they brought those precious pieces from. I utter a word, a country, my birthplace that I barely truly know, and I’m given a label, before I can finish.‘White skin, white blood. You are now the majority, congratulations.’

And all of the other places that I have learnt to absorb and accept and make part of myself, are torn away, almost. Something is fractured, connection is lost. And I am just left craving for intangible home; and various places where I’m not meant to belong.

You see,I do not have white blood.

My blood is red.