anisahagi

Quietly, my sister said she never felt like she truly belonged. She was naming something so many bicultural, bilingual 1.5- and second-generation immigrants carry: the ache of living in between, of being neither here nor there. Then she said, simply, “She died for our belonging.” I nodded and added, “She could have been doing anything else that day. She could have just gone home.”

I have been quiet. Not just with the (digital) pen—my favorite outlet, writing—but in real life too. At some point, I had to pause and step back in order to ground myself, because I started experiencing very high levels of anxiety. And anxiety is probably the most normal response to what is happening right now.