Do you ever feel like maybe you won’t ever belong?
Our little one is in school now, and my partner is obsessed with her “fitting in”. This is probably because he grew up as a child of immigrants and saw how hard not being fully integrated made his parent’s lives, so I get where he is coming from.
Parenthood rips right through our armour and pulls things out of our deepest emotional wounds.
But I’m also reminded in various ways throughout my day that I do not “fit in” here in Madrid: from glances as I walk my kid to school, to the discomfort of teachers as I wait to talk to them, sometimes having parents walk in front of me and get answered ahead of me.
Or when I feel eyes boring into my head and turn around, to be met with open-mouth stares and the kind of stink eye you would reserve for someone who did something unforgivable – like laughing at mourners at a funeral. That last one happened this weekend. It also happens at least once a week.
Sometimes it feels like I’ll never belong anywhere.
So this quote landed for me.
But does that hold true of Madrid? The place referred to as “the big village”?
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