What Immigration Doesn’t Tell You
They tell you you’re lucky. That you escaped. That you made it. They say, “You’re strong,” as if that’s supposed to make it easier. You nod, because what else can you do? People like happy endings. They don’t know what happens after the plane lands.
No one warns you about the silence. The one that follows you into the kitchen of your new apartment, where everything smells unfamiliar. Or how your own voice sounds a little different when you speak another language all day — softer, cautious, almost apologetic. You start to wonder who you are when no one here remembers your name the way it used to sound.
Immigration looks like survival from the outside. But inside, it’s more like dismantling yourself, piece by piece. You think you’re moving forward, but half of you is still back there — in the streets you know by heart, in the light that felt like home. You learn to smile at strangers, to make it sound easy when people ask, “How are you settling in?” But sometimes you just want to say, I’m not sure I am.
People think it’s about starting over, but it’s really about losing the version of you who didn’t need to. You miss small, stupid things — the sound of your language, the rhythm of familiar footsteps, the way your body used to relax when you heard your own name said right. You didn’t know that memory has texture, that belonging has a smell. You find yourself chasing it in coffee shops and voices and weather that almost feels like home, but not quite.
They say you’ll grow stronger. And maybe you do. But strength here feels different. It’s not brave or loud. It’s waking up every morning and doing it again — living in translation, pretending it doesn’t hurt. It’s smiling when people say, “You must love it here.” It’s learning how to live without the background noise of who you were.
The hardest part isn’t leaving. It’s the years after, when no one asks anymore. When people back home think you’re thriving, and people here think you belong. You learn to exist somewhere in between — fluent, polite, functional — but not whole. You keep parts of yourself hidden, because they don’t fit here. Because explaining would mean reopening too much.
And still… there’s something beautiful in this in-between. You start to notice small miracles — the first time someone pronounces your name right, the smell of your mother’s food in a kitchen that isn’t hers, the sudden warmth of laughter that feels real. Maybe that’s what strength really is — finding softness again, even after losing so much.
Immigration doesn’t tell you that you’ll become two people — the one who left, and the one who’s still trying to arrive. Both are real. Both are tired. But both are still alive.
Maybe home isn’t a place anymore. Maybe it’s the quiet understanding that you carried something with you that can’t be taken away — the stubborn pulse of who you were, still beating under everything you’ve become.
