911, I’m having an identity crisis

Dearly beloved, we’ve gathered here today on the blog of this deranged lady to read about another privileged person's complaint about the consequences of her actions.

That’s right; this is your queue to jump ship if you feel like you have no capacity or care to read about this personal crisis I’m facing. There is a very low chance that you might relate to it, but you’ll never know unless you read through this.

For those who are unaware, I am a Mexican living abroad (in The Netherlands, to be precise) for almost 9 years, but 10 since I decided that I wanted to explore other possibilities in terms of my career. After all this time, I can tell you that it has been a long, long journey that started with the words of my late father: “The world is yours; now go get it”

Well, father… if there is any internet in the afterlife, I hope you are reading this and that somehow you learned how to read English cause you forgot to mention that once you become a citizen of the world, your own identity starts to become blurry, and that’s not cool at all, dad.

It’s true… I’m not sure who I am at this point

This past December, my husband and I traveled back to Mexico City to spend time with my family and friends, and it was a phenomenal trip. We visited the classic tourist destinations since it was Daan’s first trip to the city, so places like Xochimilco, Teotihuacán, Coyoacán, and Chapultepec were front and center of the list. For me, this was not the first time visiting these places, but it was the first time I did so as an adult who has gone to a lot of therapy.

I was not expecting to reconnect with my Mexicanness as much as I did during this trip, and this has led me to feel a type of nostalgia I haven’t felt in almost a decade. I missed being home, surrounded by my family and my childhood friends. I missed the cultural implications of sitting at a table and sharing a meal with loved ones. I missed the unbelievably chaotic and noisy atmosphere of walking through the park during the peak holiday season. I missed speaking, laughing, and making other people laugh in Spanish.

But then I looked around, and my guilt of leaving was telling me I didn’t belong there. At the end of the day, I chose to leave, so who am I to complain about missing all of this? Who am I to my family? Who am I to my friends? In my eyes, I became the temporary holiday, the almost-calendar-like reminder that the end of the year is here, Fer is coming.

And then it hit me…

Even though I say it in the most casual way when I’m here in the Netherlands, no one calls me Maria back home, everyone calls me Fer. For 10 years, I’ve separated myself into two versions, and each version is intended to fit in the place I’m at.

Back home, I’m a sister, a daughter, a friend, and -as painful as this is for me- a tourist who wants to retire in Mexico and inadvertently contribute to the gentrification problems that are currently plaguing my country.

Here, where I chose to make my forever home, I’m a motion graphics designer; I’m a colleague and an adult friend; I’m a climber; I’m a runner; I’m an immigrant; I’m a wife; I’m a daughter in law and a sister in law. I’m an immigrant.

But is that all I am? Are those two things separate? I know I’m not Dutch enough, shit, I can’t even hold a normal conversation with a stranger in Dutch without having a mild anxiety attack, but…

Am I Mexican enough?

If you are expecting a happy answer to that question, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there is no happy answer to this… because I have no answer to it at all. At least not yet. I’m trying to figure out a lot of things at the moment, but this one is the one that carries the most weight on my shoulders and the one I think I need to figure out for the rest of them to fall into place.

Being surrounded by the beauty that is Mexico City and its art made me feel a type of inspiration I have never felt before, and I think that the distance I’ve put between mi amado D.F and myself has made me appreciate, and want to explore deeper what it means to me to be Mexican.

After that, I’ll let you all decide what labels you want to tag me with, I know I’ll be happy with the one I’m about to explore for myself.