Wednesday, January 27, 2016// The Statement
7B
Personal Statement: Invisible Identity
by Isobel Futter, Daily Staff Reporter
E
veryone knows what the dreaded
first day of class is like — usually
in a small discussion room, sur-
rounded by 20 people you don’t know. We
all stare at the clock, passing awkward
smiles at our neighbors and waiting for the
minute hand to hit 10 and for the profes-
sor to start talking. Unfortunately,
the class almost always begins with
this: Let’s go around the room and
say your name and an interesting
fact about yourself.
For some reason, it’s really hard
to look at yourself and imagine
something interesting. That’s not
intended to sound self-deprecat-
ing, as we’re all interesting people
in some way, shape or form! But it
is hard to look into yourself, and
choose a fact that both you and the
crowd will find intriguing. You also
ride the fine line of being boastful
or being uninteresting, with neither
option appealing in this situation.
I usually end up going for, “I ride
for the equestrian team,” or “I am a
writer for The Michigan Daily.”
It never occurs to me to tell my
peers probably the most interesting
and defining fact about myself: I’m
an international.
I began the privilege of travelling
and seeing different parts of the
world at a very young age.
I spent my first six years living
in Brussels, the capital of Belgium.
I grew up surrounded by good food,
different types of people and the
ability to travel whenever a holi-
day came around. I spoke French at
school and when playing with my
sister but English with my parents.
We visited most of Western Europe
in my childhood, and I grew up with
a passion for language and culture.
When I was six, my family moved
to Ireland for my dad’s job. I remem-
ber the excitement and anticipation
that filled my small body after my
parents sat my sister and I down to
tell us the big news.
“We’re moving to a town called
Cork, in a country called Ireland,”
my mother said to us, gauging our
reactions with hope. “There’ll be
a big garden and the school is just
down the road, so you won’t have to
take the bus anymore.”
When we moved to Cork, not
much changed. As is apropos for a
six-year-old, I was dismayed with
the idea of a Catholic private school
uniform. But I adjusted quickly and made
friends in no time. I even developed an
Irish accent and hid my foreign status
almost immediately.
After roughly 18 months in Cork, my
family relocated once more to the United
States. I lived in Midland, Michigan from
the ages of eight to 18.
Despite living in all these different
countries and having these different cul-
tural experiences, I am not from any of the
places I know so well. I am not Belgian.
Or Irish. Or American. I’m English. As
you can imagine, this is confusing to me.
How could I be from a place that I’ve never
lived, a place that is only connected to me
through my family?
My parents are both British and met
after university in Birmingham, England.
They moved to Belgium, got married and
had me there. We visited both sets of
grandparents in England on a regular basis
when living in Europe. Now that we’re in
the States, we make the leap across the
pond once a year to do the rounds. How-
ever, as often as I visited the UK, I could
never imagine it as my home. After all,
I’d never even lived there. It was a place
where I went to kiss my grandparents,
be told how tall I’d gotten and spend far
too much time in a tiny rental car on the
crowded M25.
I’d spent my whole life blending into
places that I didn’t really belong.
I changed my accent, the clothes I
wore, the games I played to fit in
and become a part of the surround-
ing way of life. It boggles my mind
a little to believe that, although I
spent so much energy relating to
these foreign cultures, they can be
no part of my formal identity. I am
restricted to one nationality, one
passport.
As I’ve gotten older and my trips
to Europe continue, I’ve started
receiving a series of strange ques-
tions. Since I rarely bring it up, and
surely not during the interesting
fact exercise, my peers at school are
often shocked to learn that I’m not
American.
“Why don’t you get citizen-
ship?” I’m often asked. My answer
is I don’t know, because I don’t feel
American. After traveling around
so often when I was younger, the
possibility of relocating again, this
time for a job of my own, is highly
plausible.
Similar to the former question, I
also get a, “Do you feel more Eng-
lish or American?” when visiting
my family.
These complex questions have
racked my brain for a majority of
my adult life (which, to be fair, isn’t
that long). But recently, I’ve come
to a solution — I feel that I repre-
sent a small part of every place I’ve
lived and visited. I feel equally con-
nected to my British heritage as I do
to my American upbringing. I am as
Belgian as I am Irish. The words
on a passport, a green card or visa
don’t define your personal nation-
ality; you do.
The conclusion to this long-
winding search of identity comes
down to the person you want to be,
and the identity you want to have. I
want to take small pieces from each
of my experiences and credit them
to the person I am today. Without
the time I spent in each of those
places, and without the connec-
tions I made with those people, my
life would be completely different.
So, when people ask me, “Where are
you from?”, I’ll probably still crack a smile,
laugh and answer, “Well, that’s compli-
cated.”
IT’S COMPLICATED
Illustration by Shane Achenbach