i’ve spent years trying to heal a heart that’s split into two different parts, a mind that’s too distorted to fully comprehend the world.

and i’ve spent years convincing myself that maybe the answer was on the outside.

another city.

another country.

another version of me.

i’ve run across the world more than once, hoping that if i kept moving long enough, i’d finally leave behind the parts of myself i couldn’t stand.

somewhere between train rides and bus windows, i kept replaying dashboard by noah kahan.

“look at you go, crossin’ state lines with your shadow. tryna run away, change your zip code. turns out that you’re still an asshole.”

i laughed the first time i heard it.

and then it hit me.

not because i’m an asshole,

well, not completely,

but because this is what i’ve been doing most of my life, and no matter how obstinately far i ran, i still had to wake up as myself.

you can change countries.

change time zones.

change languages.

but you can’t change the person looking back at you.

and then i ran away again, but i did something different. i ran to a place i’d always run away from.

and i’ve been on quite the journey. all the famous cities in one trip. through tiring heat and climbs that never seemed to end, i’ve seen the blue city, the falls, the mediterranean meeting the atlantic at cape spartel. i argued with a “merchant” in marrakesh. i had the worst food poisoning of my life.

but none of those are what i’ll remember.

i found that i had roots.

somewhere i can trace my ancestry to, people whom i share a bloodline with. people i connect with without saying a word.

family.

something i didn’t think i’d had for years. i cried tirelessly over how much i’ve missed out on. what would my life have looked like if i’d been born in morocco?

but i was born in canada. i grew up in canada. morocco was somewhere i’d only been one summer 17 years ago, and my memories are only of a place made up of stories my parents told me.

and part of diaspora erasure is also one’s stubborn refusal to be alienated from the only home they’ve ever really known.

so maybe i need to go back to why i was dreading coming back to morocco.

i guess it’s because somehow i was never just canadian.

because my name was too different. because my lunches smelled different. because people always wanted to know where i was really from.

and so i tried harder.

i wanted to be canadian. only canadian.

i covered my body with tattoos, rejected my religion, refused to speak darija, and ran to england for two years, and every time i was asked where i was from, i’d tell everyone i was canadian. i never mentioned morocco.

…but i never came back to morocco.

not because i wasn’t born here.

because i convinced myself i didn’t belong here.

and then fear of missing out got the best of me.

once in morocco, my accent gives me away before i finish a sentence. my darija is broken. i dress differently. i think differently.

too moroccan in canada.

too canadian in morocco.

always a little out of place.

and maybe that’s what i’ve been doing to myself, too.

always trying to become someone easier to love.

someone less sensitive.

less hard-headed.

someone who didn’t carry impostor syndrome everywhere they went. someone who hadn’t watched bipolar disorder pull the ground out from underneath them. someone who hadn’t let fear ruin good things before they even had the chance to become real.

but i only have one person to live with.

myself.

so i’m not perfect.

and maybe, sometimes, very often, i’m the problem.

because i’m human.

because i’ve made mistakes.

because i’ll probably make them again.

but maybe growing up isn’t finally becoming someone else.

maybe it’s accepting that i don’t have to.

maybe i don’t have to choose between being moroccan or canadian.

maybe i don’t have to keep chasing some perfect version of myself that doesn’t exist.

maybe home was never just a place.

maybe home is finally looking at myself with the same grace i’ve always given everyone else.

i’m imperfect.

i always will be.

and maybe, for the first time,

i think that’s okay.