Can a Third Culture Kid Call Anywhere Home?

If I am asked where home is, I default to mentally scanning every place I’d lived prior to where I am. For example, if you asked me about home in Guam, I would consider Canada or South Korea. If you asked me in the Philippines, I would add Guam into the list for consideration. If you ask me now, I would add the Philippines. I am noticing a pattern here, are you?

I never think of where I am presently as home. It’s as if a place can only be considered a home once I’ve left it. Only once I am able to look back and see the experience as an outsider, once I can compare it to the others.

I’ve lived in the Philadelphia area for almost nine years—previously, the longest stint was five years in Guam—yet I’ve never called in home.

There is fear attached to the word home, this fear of settling. It feels like a bad word, a judgement. You settled? To call Philly home feels like a life sentence. To admit this after a life of global mobility means that I’ll never move ever again. Rather than growing roots, it feels like quicksand. This is where my anxiety comes in and loves to play this either/or game. It tells me only one thing can be true—if I say that this is home, everywhere else disappears. Am I still an Adult Third Culture Kid if I settle?

When I flew from the Philippines to Philadelphia in 2015, I packed my life into four suitcases. A few vinyl records, a handful of books, tropical clothes, and two shoeboxes full of letters, airplane tickets, pictures of my mother, and knick-knacks. I left behind my typewriter and record player, a newspaper clipping from 1912 documenting the sinking of the Titanic (we all went through a Titanic phase, right?), photo albums of my childhood, of people and places I don’t remember, of love I don’t remember receiving.

Due to a massive thunderstorm and after circulating Philadelphia International for half hour, we landed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I remember the airport being absolutely empty except for our flight and it took over an hour for our luggage to come through the carousel. The bags finally arrived and my dad waited in a long line of other frustrated passengers to get a rental car.

In the pouring rain, after traveling for twenty hours, we made the drive to New Jersey on I-76 (where I would commute, years later.) My suitcases were in the bed of the truck, getting absolutely soaked from the rain that was pummeling down, reminding me of the monsoon rains in Manila. The ones that would turn the world outside my window an entire shade of grey, shadows of palm trees swinging.

I never expected to stay in the area for long. It was assumed that I would move out-of-state or country once I graduated because that was my life pattern. You do your post and you leave.

The first moment I felt like I was meant to be here happened the day I moved into my college dorm at Rutgers-Camden. I rolled my suitcase to the last door in the suite and outside of the window squeezed in between two twin beds was the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

I don’t know if I didn’t see enough bridges when I was younger, but for as long as I can remember, I’d been obsessed with the Ben Franklin. When I visited my grandfather (we call him Pop Pop) in New Jersey, he’d drive me over the bridge and we would spend the day or evening in the city. It is because of him that Philadelphia felt familiar. I felt a kinship to this city because people I cared about were connected here and this bridge became a symbol of home.

This feels like a confession.

I feel at home in Philadelphia.

I am not the same person I was when I arrived here nine years ago. It’s known that moving during your developmental years is impactful, but this move was life-changing. I dove in head-first into really finding myself, taking solo trips into the city to find my favorite sushi and coffee spots. I started a blog called Philly Immersion because the intent was exactly that–to immerse myself and finally be able to grow roots. For once, I am the one calling the shots about where I live and where I put my energy. I get to decide if I want to stay or go, and both choices are right.

Perhaps the biggest realization is that my anxiety was putting me in a box, telling me I could only be either/or. I couldn’t be a TCK and call a place home. I can only be on either side of the river, the ocean, the continent. But maybe that’s not true. Maybe I can be the bridge between them. I am straddling the identities I’ve accumulated over the years, rooted deeply in more places than one.

This decision doesn’t have to be forever. If one year, we decide it is time to pack up and move, we can, but right now my heart is telling me that I belong here. I’ve made some of my closest friendships, have family, met and married my husband here. I have my go-to spots for coffee and Brussel sprouts (looking at you, Double Knot.) This city has seen me explore, break, and grow in more ways that one and it holds so many important memories. Right now, Philadelphia is home.