A love letter to being bilingual

 

Dear being bilingual,

 

People always say that it is so great to be bilingual and yes, there are many positive aspects, but it is about time that negative parts are addressed as well. Being bilingual gives me the opportunity to communicate with a big part of my family, it influences what I perceive as culture and obviously there are many more positive things that come with it. However, it also made me feel like I belonged nowhere, didn’t fit in and in a way, it made me feel guilty. But let’s start at the beginning.

 

In my case being bilingual means that I was born and grew up in the Netherlands, but my mother is from Germany. So, I grew up speaking both Dutch and German. For the longest time I didn’t let myself feel “home” somewhere. Yes, “home” is not necessarily a place and I know that, but still, it is important to feel like you have roots somewhere, like your story has a firm beginning. It wasn’t until maybe one or two years ago that I allowed myself to feel “home”. I came back to my hometown and to the Netherlands from being gone for a little bit, I walked home from the bus stop and for the first time I recognized the smile that grew on my face, I felt the happiness about the familiarity and I didn’t feel guilty by acknowledging it. Honestly, to me personally that was one of the moments that really altered by brain for the better.

 

We all know how cruel school can be when you are growing up, and I’m not even saying that it was the fault of others, because I probably was standing in my own way a lot of the time as well. It always thought that I was not Dutch enough to fit in there and I was definitely not German enough to fit in there if I wanted to. Now first of all I’m more confident in who I am, but I also let go from feeling guilty towards other people for being who I am and for feeling what I feel. If I feel more Dutch than German (which is my case) than I don’t have to explain myself to people around me and I for sure don’t need to feel guilty that I’m letting people down. However, with feeling more Dutch than German I can still like the German part of myself and there can be moments in which I like some parts of myself there better. I wouldn’t be me without one or the other, and every individual has the right to express and to feel who they are.

 

I’ll always be grateful for the fact that I can follow my dream by easily studying in Germany now, connect and communicate with my family and live life with a second culture. It is almost midnight now that I’m writing this, I’m missing people that maybe I wouldn’t be missing if my life wasn’t so spread out over these two countries. Maybe, instead of having to wait for days (weeks or months sometimes) I could just go a visit them tomorrow. However, many of these people wouldn’t even be in my life if my life was not the way it is. Some of the most amazing people that I have in my life wouldn’t be a part of it.

 

You can define yourself every single day and it might look different every single day. I’ve had days where I was so sick of being stuck in the middle, of not being understood. Days on which it felt like family tried to persuade me into one of the two languages/countries like they understood the struggles I felt better than I did myself. I can’t even fully blame them, but I didn’t need people who tried to solve the problems I had whilst not going through them themselves. I needed people who listened to me and who made me feel like the struggles I had were valid and mattered instead of dismissing them like they were the most unimportant thing they had ever heard in their entire life.

 

Every single thing in life is connected to positive and negative experiences and feelings. We grow as we go; we get more confident as we go. This goes for everything in life, be yourself because it is the most beautiful, you’ll ever be, take the risk and do what you’ve always wanted to do because life is valuable. Your struggles, in whichever part of life, matter and if you’d need it, I’ll be the first one to be there if you need a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to.

 

All my love,

 

Anna