Being a third culture kid means you never really have a home

The beauty of the English language is that it has two very important but also very distinct words: house and home. And they don’t mean the same thing. You have a house. You live in an apartment. Many people are lucky enough to have a house, or houses, of some sort or other. But to have a home is something entirely different, and much more special.

Quick bumper-sticker version of my life: Born in Greece, moved to New York when I was three, moved to Puerto Rico when aged six, back to Greece at seven, and finally moved to Madrid at 13. I currently live in Reims and study at Sciences Po. In less than two years I’ll move to New York to study at Columbia University.

Apart from how complicated it is to explain what I’m studying, if it’s an exchange program (it’s not), and where in God’s name Reims is (the middle of nowhere), it’s also difficult to explain what home is for me. It’s called being a third culture kid.

Is home Greece? No, definitely not. Actually, I only really go to Greece once or twice a year. And it doesn’t feel like home, because even though there’s something great about being back in a familiar environment, speaking your mother tongue, and seeing old friends, it doesn’t feel like home.

The same goes for New York. I usually go to New York once a year, and I love it. It’s one of my favourite cities, and I probably like going there more than I like going to Greece. But it’s not quite home – there’s something missing. Puerto Rico I won’t even talk about; people go on exchange programs that last longer than I lived there. So we’re left with Spain.

Spain is special. Madrid is even more special. Everyone who knows me knows how much I love Madrid. And now that my family is moving once again, I realize just how hard I’m taking it. I’ve moved enough times in my life to be able to open a moving company, and yet this time is different.

Not only am I at an age where I’m very conscious of what this means, but I finally felt like I had found somewhere I could call home. I loved our house in Madrid, I loved my school, my friends, the city, the restaurants, the nightlife, the people – in short, I loved everything.

There’s obviously some bias involved as I have a very selective memory, but regardless of that, I can say with certainty that Madrid had become home for me. Now that I’m away, living in a town that I can’t say I like that much (more on that later), in a completely new environment, Madrid was safe and familiar. Now I’m going to lose even that.

Does this make me homeless? Well, not quite. I have somewhere to live in Reims and I’ll have somewhere to live in Milan. I can always visit Madrid. But right now, there isn’t anywhere I could point to and say: “That’s home.”

People often say “home is where the heart is,” and while my heart is definitely in Madrid, it’s in many other places too. And home is also where my family is, so I still have a home. I just don’t have anywhere, right now, that feels like it fully encompasses every aspect of what home means to me.

While this isn’t the ideal situation to be in, something tells me that I’ll find somewhere to call home again. I don’t know when or where, but there’s a small part of me that’s at peace knowing that it’ll happen.