Home is where your heart is...
I used to come to Copenhagen and feel different. I used to walk streets of Koge and have this certitude that everyone knows I am different- I am not from here. Although everyone seem to be okay with the fact that I am non- Danish speaking person, some even found it very attractive still I felt like I quite don’t belong. And it wasn’t like I didn’t like it, most of the time I found it funny and refreshing. I used to make an excuses I wasn’t from here- so I didn’t had to speak or really understand them speaking. I had an excuse to not know towns, roads and buses.
Yesterday I went to shop to buy some batteries for my mp3 and I cashier started to speak with me. He asked for a change because he didn’t have anything to give me back. Even if I didn’t understood the words particularly I understood what he meant. And when he was waiting for me to answer I told him the same phrase I wear like an old sweeter (the one who protects you, makes your excuses). But I felt guilty and to be honest I no longer felt different. The society had accepted me- I had adapted and changed so much that I no longer felt like someone from abroad- I felt like Danish.
It is frightening in the same time- almost too easy to become someone else. Or am I? It is almost too easy sometimes to forget from witch country I am originally, almost too easy to dress myself in this new mentality.
I live here for 9 months now. And it make me wonder- is it possible to be born in the wrong country? And if not do I betray my nationality by finding my heart elsewhere? I grew up in a society who hasn’t forgot that they have been captured and they had to fight their freedom. And with “national patriotism” as a mantra we were brain washed. There is no better place than home, but isn’t home where is your heart? I think it took me all this time to get over this “if you leave Latvia you are lost and mole”. Now I can look back knowing that they was wrong and right in the same time.
There is nothing for me back in Latvia. I have found happiness (as corny as it sounds it is true). I belong outside Latvia. Am simply born in the wrong dot on the map and leaving is best I could ever do. But this cure doesn’t work for everybody. Most of them were meant to be born inside and their hearts do belong there. My home is somewhere else.
