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

