reclamation

I used to think belonging 

was a performance. 

I thought it was something I could earn if I became softer, 

quieter, 

easier to hold. 

I thought love was an examination 

I had to pass repeatedly, 

a room full of eyes 

waiting for me to become 

someone worthy of staying. 

So I became fluent 

in everyone else’s language. 

I laughed at jokes that scraped against me. I swallowed opinions whole. 

I folded myself into smaller and smaller pieces, like paper being creased 

until it no longer resembled 

what it once was. 

I mistook adaptation for self-erasure. I mistook people-pleasing for kindness. I mistook exhaustion for love. 

And all the while, 

there was this persistent ache,

this gnawing certainty 

that I was still somehow lacking. 

Not enough. 

Never enough. 

I could give away my time, 

my energy, 

my laughter, 

my boundaries, 

my silence, 

and still feel 

like an uninvited guest 

in my own life. 

Eventually, 

the weight of becoming everything for everyone became unbearable. 

I carried it like a stone in my chest. 

There were days 

when the world seemed impossible to inhabit, when my own mind became a country at war, when existing felt less like living 

and more like enduring. 

I became a stranger to myself. 

Then I went to university 

and anthropology found me. 

Or perhaps 

I found myself inside it.

I learned about worlds 

I had never lived in, 

people who prayed differently, 

loved differently, 

grieved differently, 

ordered their lives according to truths that were not mine 

and yet were no less real. 

I learned a word: 

ethnocentrism. 

The instinct to place your own way of being at the centre of everything. 

To measure all other lives 

against your own ruler. 

And suddenly, 

I saw myself. 

I had been ethnocentric 

towards my own existence. 

I had spent years 

believing there was one correct way to be human, one acceptable shape, 

one approved version of myself 

that would finally deserve belonging. 

I had been treating myself 

like an outsider 

in my own culture.

Anthropology taught me 

that difference does not demand conquest. Cultures coexist. 

They argue. 

They overlap. 

They misunderstand one another. And yet they persist, 

side by side, 

without one becoming the other. 

I realised then: 

I do not have to assimilate 

to be loved. 

I do not have to abandon myself 

to be accepted. 

I do not have to perform familiarity to deserve a place among people. I can exist 

with all my contradictions. 

I can be anxious 

and still be worthy. 

I can be wounded 

and still be whole. 

I can be different 

without being deficient. 

Belonging is not the prize 

for successful self-abandonment.

It is not something hidden 

inside another person’s approval. It is not waiting for me 

at the end of perfect behaviour. 

Belonging begins 

the moment I stop treating myself like foreign territory. 

The moment I stop asking, 

“What do I need to become?” 

and begin asking, 

“What if I am already someone 

worth knowing?” 

I am learning 

that I can stand beside people 

without disappearing into them. 

I can love 

without dissolving. 

I can adapt 

without erasing. 

I can reach for others 

without abandoning my own hand. And perhaps that is the most human thing I have ever learned: 

that I was never missing. 

I was only trying to migrate 

out of myself.

Now, 

I am slowly, carefully, 

coming home.