Hey all
Recently, i met up with an old friend (one who i met when i first came here) but who i have heard things from through my mother (Albert’s parents and my mother are still friends).
In school, we were very close as well as with another mutual friend Ali. Now, Ali and i connected partly because he and i both came ‘from’ America. I had been born there and so had lived there and had never set foot here in Australia before i came depsite my citizenship. He, on the other hand, had dual citizenship, US/Australia and his parents were American, but Ali had never set foot in America before he left when i was 9.
So, i met up with Albert -Ali’s and mine’s mutual friend the other day after ten years of not really having seen him. It was…. strange. Good, but strange.
He asked me if i still spoke in French with my mother… i found that i could not really explain how come i stopped. Well, i still do, but only occasionally. I couldn’t explain how kids here are cruel, and that i had to choose in order to fit in, that i was teased for my accent (a weird mix of Mauritian-French and Californian).
When it came to jobs he asked me what i was planning, and i said that it an ideal world, i wld work for the UN (an international org) or an NGO…but have set my sights on being a diplomat so i was gonna join DFAT(the Dept of Foreign Affair sand Trade in Aus). But that i did not know if i wanted to be ’stuck’ representing one country (or, en if i could). You see, i have the choice to join DFAT and/or the US Foreign Service.
And i don’t know if i could be able to, emotionally, represent just the one, or be able to represent one cuntry my entire life. (Which is, yes, i know, what i do on a daily basis on a personal level, i just don’t know if i could do that consciously on a professional level).
And i tried to explain to him that i felt the need to return to America to live for at least a year…. to face my demons. Because i just left, the umbilical cord was cut, so to speak, and i had no further contact with the States from when i was 6 until i was 12. And he couldn’t understand that.
He was astonished that i had idolised it for so long and that i love LA when he thinks its an shithole.
In repsonse, i tried to explain… that i didn’t particularly like Aus when i came either (read: hated it). But now, i have come to (albeit somewhat grudgeingly i admit) to like it, such as the weather, the humour, and the countryside is very pretty. So are the kangaroos. And the deer. The snakes and spiders? Not so much..
Can anyone understand?
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