A year and a month ago, we came back "for good" to France, the country wherewe grew up, where we lived for most of our life. The country we still called "Home" for all the 7 years we lived in London. When we took our decision, we even kept on saying "We're going back home".
Yet, since we came back to France, it hasn't felt like Home AT ALL!
Thinking about it, I never felt like I was "home" for all the years that I lived in France. I always did feel like a stranger in my home country, in my home town.
Adolescent, only when I was going to Germany for 2 weeks every summer did I feel less like a stranger. I knew I was a stranger in the eyes of the new people I kept on meeting over there, but a different kind of stranger, the kind that people welcome with open arms, that people won't juge because they are different.Of course you're different: you come from a different country, with a different culture and different habits! Why would they juge that? And in the end, we always found similarities that made them accept me for who I was and not only because I was a stranger! So I wasn't so much of a stranger anymore and I found my-self feeling better over there, in Germany, than I always had back home in France.
Living in London, it was just the same as in Germany, to the additional fact that I wasn't the only one in this case, all the people around me were strangers living in the same town: not their home town. All these people were special because of this. They accepted it, therefore accepted them-selves and people around them accepted them for it too.
More to that, as people were able to accept each other for their cultures, they were able to accept each other too for their character traits.
I've always had a certain capability to accept people for what they are, to try not to juge, or at least not straight away...to give the benefice of the doubt.
So when I entered this whole new community, this whole new mixed culture, I found my home.
I always thought that this non-belonging feeling I had felt in France vs. the do-belong feeling I had experienced in Germany was due to my adolescence. But seeing how hard it is to feel like home here in France vs. in London, maybe that wasn't only it, maybe France is just not my home country at heart, just on paper and where my family lives...
That would explain why the first thing I thought when waking up on the morning of our week-end in London was "I'm going back home!!!" with a strong sense of relief and the songI had in my head all week-end was "Feels like home" by Nora Jones, and the main thing I felt when leaving again to go to France was a suffocating tightening in my chest...
