I’ve been thinking about belonging. Where do I belong?

Belonging isn’t the same as home. Home is where your people are, or your stuff. You may call a place home despite not living there for years, a place where the memories might be blurry at the edges and you might get lost on your return. Or it can be a place that you run to at every chance, your bolthole away from expat life and locations. Home is changeable and you can even have more than one of them. But do you really belong there? Can you belong when you’re an expat?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as for the last three-and-a-bit months we have been homeless (in the most glamorous sense of the word) and travelling around. We’ve been tourists in Japan, said our goodbyes to Malaysia, journeyed around the U.S., spent time with family in England and saw old haunts in the Netherlands, before making our way to the place that will hopefully become our new home: Moscow. We’ve been living out of suitcases and eating at restaurants. It’s been great, and totally weird, all at the same time. I’ve always been of the opinion that home is where my immediate family is, and where my stuff is. But I wouldn’t have called any of the hotels rooms home… I did, however, sometimes feel like I belonged.

There were places we visited where we could immediately envisage setting up home. Landing in California was weird. I’ve never lived there, but there’s something about that place that just relaxes me, and I felt like I belonged. Walking the organic streets of Portland, admiring the scattering of hipsters and their artfully coiffed facial hair and latte art, I could see myself settling in quite nicely – once I’d got the requisite tattoos, obviously. Fleeting moments of connection, to a place, or a person, all give you that sense of belonging.

So arriving ‘home’, to England, was… underwhelming. It should be the place I belong to, after all, I speak the language, know the culture, and certainly lived there for long enough. My family and some of my closest friends live there, and I don’t have to do jazz hands to show that I’m making a joke. But whether it’s because my parents don’t live in the town where I grew up (which is becoming blurry edged for me now) anymore, or just because I have spent so much time away from the UK, it didn’t feel like I belonged there. It was a very disconcerting feeling, especially after spending months away and without anywhere as a base. Moments of belonging came and went, and I assumed it would be like a comfort blanket, there all the time.

And then we flew to Holland. I felt like I belonged again, in that I knew places and people and shops and a (teensy) bit of the language. Despite all my protestations to the contrary, I would live there again. That took me by surprise, because I’ve always thought I’d never live there again and while all those reasons were also true for the UK, there was something else connecting me. That sense of belonging. Even after our brilliant five years in Malaysia, I didn’t feel like I belonged. I look too different, live too differently, from most of the people there. The expat privilege felt too strong to overcome, although I always felt those moments of connection, of belonging, to people in the same situation. And when I was in Publika, of course. Sweet Publika, how I miss thee. Sigh.

So here we are in Moscow. I don’t speak the language, know one person (although I am developing friendship vibes towards at least two of my local baristas in Starbucks – hi Alexei!), and I am trying to find us a house that will become a home. I’m a long way from feeling like I belong, but I am sure those moments will come.

I look in my wallet and I see five different currencies. Cards emblazoned with Touch n Go, Autopass, OVChipkaart, Oyster, Troika. I have a collection of SIM cards (and a collection of phones for them). Apps for cities from three different continents. And I think I’ve realised where I belong. It’s not in one place, all the time. It’s in lots of places, at different times.  How lucky I am to see and live the world this way, to know I can feel at home in places from Santa Monica (yeah I wish *snort*) to Leeds to Singapore to Melbourne. I can’t wait to add Moscow to that list. I belong.