A Question of Transatlantic Identity

When you belong to two places, traveling between them becomes a matter of return, a perpetual process of coming back to one home or the other. The fundamental dichotomy is between these two sides of the ocean: here and there. You are always here, relatively speaking, but for the definition of yourself to be complete, it must also include your connection to there. Your heart must be wide enough to hold both countries simultaneously—linked but distinct—constantly stretching to contain the vast expanse of salt water between them.

The first time I crossed the ocean, I was three months old: made in America with Croatian parts, as someone put it—which is sort of silly but true. For three months, my cells had been multiplying exclusively with the aid of American air and American water, but when I arrived in Croatia, I like to think that my metaphorical blood recognized the country that had sourced it.

Location and corporality are more transient than my intangible sense of self. When I return, I slough off my there skin and replace it with my here skin; I swap one tongue for another—but on the inside, my here-ness and there-ness are buzzing beneath my breastbone, still inexorably intertwined no matter the context, no matter the time zone. This is who I am and what I cannot change: two equal discrete parts that make one unhyphenated whole.

Being in Croatia is not quite a perfect fit; as it happens, I spend most of the year living elsewhere. (T)here, I am home, but I am also out of step: the fashion is just a little different, I don’t know the right slang, and new cafes have opened where I remember there being bookstores. There’s too much cigarette smoke—I must relearn how to breathe. And yet, when I’ve been away for too long, I am astounded by the ache of absence, the visceral need to be there and not here—my sudden inability to breathe the clear American air that’s so familiar to me. (T)here, I am home, but I spend my time with people who cannot fully understand my duality. America is comfortable because I’ve grown up with it, but, as it happens, America is not at the symbolic heart of me. In other words, being in America is not quite a perfect fit, either.

Home is the soil that nurtures your roots. It’s familiar like your own handwriting, easy like breathing, comfortable like water that’s the temperature of blood.

Home is where the heart is.

Your heart is in your body, and your body is on Earth. When you live in one place, the laws of time and space do not permit you to live in another place at the same time. By being born and growing up here, you necessarily lose the opportunity to be born and grow up there. Knowing what you have forfeited, you might suffer a sense of impermanence, instability, or uncertainty. Sometimes, it may even seem tragic that you are split between two homes—but more often than not, you tend to view it as an extraordinary gift.

I have been gifted with two countries, two cultures, two languages, and, most importantly, two perspectives. The ocean is both a barrier and a bridge. My assimilation is imperfect and effortful, but if it were not like this, then I would not be who I am. Regardless of my mutable location, I define myself by the things to which I am attached: two countries, their people (who are my people), the ocean between them, an overwhelming sense of belonging when the plane lands (t)here, and, above it all, the perpetual journey from here to there and back again.

It is said that we are all travelers, tirelessly coming and going, losing pieces of our hearts whenever we fall in love with a new landscape or a new city. Instead, I think it’s the opposite: whenever we fall in love with a new landscape or a new city, we tuck it away inside of us, collecting and keeping, carrying hearts that grow ever heavier. With all of these journeys across the ocean, I wish I could say that I’ve mastered the art of traveling light, but my heart is always full of love for both of my countries. I bring my transatlantic identity with me everywhere I go.

Maybe what matters most is the place to which you return. I, for one, am always traveling home.

Romana Pilepich ’18 is a government concentrator living in Winthrop House.