Not From Here, Not From There (And That's the Point)
Growing up across languages and cultures made me feel like I never fully fit anywhere...until I realised that might be the superpower.
So my home desk isn’t really a desk.
It’s an old, antique-ish table my landlord left behind. No drawers, no storage, no clear purpose. Just vibes.
And of course, I’m not allowed to swap it for something more useful because rental life is full of charming limitations.
One rainy afternoon, my daughter and I decided to turn it into a little project.
She’s eight, full of opinions, and slightly obsessed with aesthetic spaces (à la modern-day tween). So we rearranged everything, added a desktop screen (my 38-year-old spine approved), and stuck a cup of funky pens in the corner to make it feel more “me.”
She also threw in some fluffy accessories because, you know, a space isn’t complete unless it could be mistaken for a unicorn’s bedroom.
That’s where I was the other day.
Sitting at this makeshift desk, halfway between work and a daydream, typing away… when something shifted.
Nothing dramatic. No lightning bolt. No profound whisper from the universe.
Just a quiet pause in the middle of a sentence. Tabs open in French, Arabic, and English. My brain casually hopping between them like it was scrolling through apps.
And then I paused: wait… this actually feels right.
This rhythm. This juggling act. This odd little in-between space I’ve carved out.
It didn’t just feel good. It felt like mine.
Like I had accidentally built something that fit.
Stay with me. I’ll explain.
At that moment, I realised how much of my life has been shaped by translation.
Not just of words, but of worldviews.
French is my first language, the one I think in when I’m serious.
Arabic comes next: the language of street smarts and emotional outbursts.
English settled in quietly but firmly, courtesy of schools and unis, Friends reruns, and eventually, my entire career.
So now, I toggle between them constantly (nothing fancy, it’s just standard Lebanese behaviour).
We can hear a sentence in English and instantly know why it won’t land in Arabic.
We can read something in French and feel when it needs a complete rewrite to stop sounding like it was chewed up and spat out by an algorithm.
For a while, I assumed all that switching made me a bit scattered (probably because I grew up being called messy, mostly for things like my room or having too many notebooks open at once).
But looking back, there was always a system underneath.
A kind of logic that didn’t look tidy, but worked.
That moment at my desk?
It made me realise that this multi-layered, cross-wired brain of mine wasn’t something to streamline.
It was the reason everything clicked.
Who are we trying to be?
The world loves a good box.
Where are you from?
What do you do?
Are you more of a café-working creative or a PTA-scheduling realist?
Pick one. Bonus points if it fits in an Instagram bio.
But I’ve never been just one thing.
I grew up with French grammar rules in my head, Arabic in one ear, a sprinkle of random Greek words in the other, and a steady stream of American TV shaping my sarcasm.
I memorised Molière by day and watched Sister, Sister by night.
I lived in Lebanon, took yearly family trips abroad, and now I’m raising a child in East London, where school drop-offs are basically the UN General Assembly.
I think in subtitles. Sometimes I dream in three languages at once.
It’s chaotic. It’s useful. It’s mine.
Micro-communities, Macro brain
Over the years, I’ve floated through different communities. The micro kind that shapes you in quiet but lasting ways. Frenchies in Lebanon. Arabic-only offices in Beirut. International student life in the UK. My Greek university boyfriend’s family. Expats. Freelancers. Single mums. Women rebuilding. People reinventing. People winging it, successfully or not.
In every one, I’ve been slightly in, slightly out.
Always one foot in, one foot observing.
Fluent enough to belong. Foreign enough to notice.
And even when you feel clear, the world doesn’t always get the memo.
Last month in Beirut, I was at a family gathering. My cousin (love him btw) told a story about a man who married a woman with two kids. He framed it like a noble sacrifice. One of those “well done, mate” but also “why’d he have to go and do that” stories.
Except… that’s me.
So when people turn your actual life into a cautionary tale or a charity project, it’s… interesting.
Even when it’s not meant to be.
We do this all the time.
We turn people into hypotheticals.
It’s easier than updating what we consider normal.
But the real blocker? That sneaky inner voice.
Honestly? The biggest blocker isn’t what people say.
It’s the quiet thoughts we carry.
The ones that say:
“You’re too much.”
“You take up space.”
“Make it easier for people to understand you.”
“Shrink a little, just in case.”
We edit ourselves before anyone else even opens their mouth.
That mid-project moment (the “alignment”) didn’t come from trying harder.
It came from not trying at all. From being so completely myself, there was nothing to explain. No polishing. No performing. Just me, doing my thing on a table that might’ve once hosted someone’s Sunday roast.
Stop fitting in. Start fitting you.
I’ve spent years trying to fit into boxes that never considered someone like me. Now? I’m building my own format. It’s messy, layered, multilingual, and probably not what’s expected. But it fits.
Because when you’re not fully from here or there, you don’t need to choose a side. You just need to make a space that feels like yours.
And maybe that’s what belonging actually is:
Not finally being understood by everyone, but just no longer needing to explain yourself to yourself.
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