I Am a TCK

whenyoureathirdculturekid:

emmagreere:

I will admit, part of the reason I’m writing about life as a TCK, is 
due the fact that I have no idea what else to write about so this just seemed like something someone would be interested in.

So for those of you who don’t know, I’m a third culture kid (duh, you should know that. I mean seriously, I have it posted like everywhere and use every moment I have to rub it in your face).
A TCK is a person who has grown up anywhere but their actual country of origins or someone who has lived in multiple countries. For myself, my passport country is the US, but I’ve lived in Thailand for ten of my eighteen years. TCKs are more commonly found in military families, missionary families, kids of diplomats, 
and others. Pretty simple right?

I don’t want to say that my family is any different from any other TCK’s, but mine is a little strange. I didn’t actually realize how weird my family was until my brother, Matt (the Matt I mentioned in my last post aboutLand and Freedom) joined the military and had to give details about his family (you know stuff like that, to make sure no one is in leagues with terrorists or anything).
Let me give you a little bit of detail about my life; me and my brothers are half Filipino and half American, my sister is adopted and really my cousin so she’s full Filipino. I was born in Japan while my brothers were born in Utah. My sister in law is French and my brother in law is American. And my sister and her husband live in Japan. And of course before I forget, me and my parents live in Thailand.

So extremely short story of my life. So before my parents decided to become missionaries and move to Thailand, my dad was an air traffic controller for the United States Air Force. And that’s the reason why I was born in Japan, because my dad was stationed there for several years. I don’t remember much about Okinawa, Japan since we moved to Florida before my second birthday. I lived in Florida for roughly around five years until we moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand a month before I turned eight.

When I went back to the States four years later, family friends in Florida asked me and my family what it was like to be ‘home’. ‘Home’… that word is the hardest for a lot of TCKs to define. To me and my brothers, Florida isn’t home. It just isn’t. I don’t have many memories of the States being ‘home’. To me Thailand is home. But in other ways it kind of isn’t. I’ve been an outsider my entire time in Thailand. Because of my white features, I’m always considered the foreigner. My brother Josh (yes, the borderline hipster one), gave the perfect definition of being a TCK, “When I’m in Thailand I feel like a foreigner, but when I’m in the States I feel so Asian.” That pretty much sums it up. I fortunately haven’t gotten the chance to really feel like this yet, but we’ll see next year when I return to the States.

Growing up in Thailand, being bi racial, and being born in Japan has made me quite a confused child. My dad once told me he was surprised when he had heard that my brother, Josh had gone through an identity crisis. To that I chuckled and told my dad that all of kids have gone through at least a small identity crisis at least once in our lives. Being a TCK is extremely confusing and we get confused on what we are and where we come from.

Link to a short film about TCKs: http://vimeo.com/41264088

whenyoureathirdculturekid:

kokothoughts:

I understand how lost and miserable you must be.

It was already difficult leaving the place that became your second home. You thought everything will be fine once you come “home” to “friends and family.”

Everything is exactly the way you remember it, yet nothing feels the same. You are not sure what the reality is anymore. You are not sure who you are anymore. You are still (insert your name), you still hold a (insert your nationality) passport, but something inside you tells you you are not the same person that left “home.”

You look at your phone. You scroll through whatsapp conversations and text messages and call history. So clearly you were there. You see pictures of places nowhere to be seen around you, with people whose voice and smiles remain only in your memories.

You open your luggage. You see pieces of clothing you bought overseas. You take out each item, hang them back in your closet, fold some and and throw away others. Each piece reminds you of a certain person or a group of people, a place and evokes a certain emotion. You watch a movie in your head with each piece of clothing you pick up.

And then you bump into that shirt at the bottom of the bag. You pause for a second, look at it and smile to yourself, hold it tight and bury your nose in that fading scent. You put it down, look out the window and wonder if you were really there in the faraway land with those people.

It’s so bright and sunny outside, but you feel empty like something critical’s missing. It looks familiar but it doesn’t look so familiar.

Your bag is still a mess but you turn on your computer. You wonder what time it is there. You think to yourself - this computer has been to everywhere with me. You turn on Facebook and check up on your friends overseas. They seem to be doing fine. It makes you sad that life goes on there without you. Some of them sent you well-wishing messages. Some of them don’t know that you left. Suddenly you feel at ease; it’s like a part of you still live there.

Then you realize that you can’t call them out anymore. You think about what you could’ve been doing with whom if you were there. You wonder what your friends must be up to at this time and suddenly get “second home-sick.”

Your friends back home want to meet up. You get excited. It’s been so long since the last time you all got together. As you walk out the door, you notice how “home” smells different from your second home. The way the wind blows, the sun sets, the clouds spread, the noises, the trees, the flowers..every little thing is subtly different. You know that only you notice these things.

Soon, you don’t mind it anymore. Your friends are here. Familiar laughter, familiar smiles, familiar faces. You sit down and start talking about how everyone’s been. It’s difficult to explain to friends the deepest thoughts and emotions and the subtleties because first you have to tell them about the people they don’t know about, the places and streets and slangs. You can’t use the foreign words. As soon as you start talking, you get excited with old memories, but soon you are frustrated, having to explain every word in your sentence. Soon your friends get bored and want to talk about something else which you have no idea about. While the familiar voices chat about the same subject you discussed a year ago, you suddenly feel like a stranger at your own home.

I thought I missed home, you think.

Your friends notice your mind wandering elsewhere, and accuse you of being arrogant, having changed, or not caring about your friendship. You deny their accusations but on your way back home, you wonder if they are right.

Anyway, all you care about is going home and checking Facebook to make sure you don’t miss out anything on the life back in your “second home.”