Ekaterina (Katya) Reymarova is Russian-Canadian. Katya is a psychologist with a passion for creative arts. An artist with a passion for healing expression. And a poet with a passion for tasteful use of swear words. Katya currently lives and works in Berlin. For more about Katya, head over to katerina_inwriting.
Longing for belonging rings like a bell in my head for the past couple of weeks as I carry a thought of writing this piece with me. It’s not an urgent thought, instead it is on the back-burner with a low heat setting. Yet, it makes me reflect on exactly how much searching for one’s place was and is going on in my life.
I am a migrating bird of a human. A bird that fled one country at 15 with my family only to return to it by myself at 22. Only to flee again and again, until finally settling in Germany at 27.
My longing for my home country of Russia has followed me in my dreams during my teenage and young adult years when I was living in North America. I would have a dream about meeting someone near a park in downtown Moscow and would wake up only to realise that I am on the wrong continent, where most people knew very little of Moscow, or its parks, or me. In my Canadian high school, many couldn’t phonetically conquer my ‘not so complicated for Slavic standards’ name and called me Miss Russia instead. Although somewhat flattering, it immediately both depersonified me and put a heavy weight of representing one seventh of all land on me. I did not find home there and then, not inside, nor outside of myself.
Moving forward in time. When I came back to Russia after years of living elsewhere, I was surprised to find out that it didn’t feel like home either. Nor did I belong. It was a lot like remembering a taste of your favourite dish in childhood: so soothing and familiar, so mouth-watering and satisfying. Except it was different, it felt like a flat and grotesque copy of childhood impressions, tastes, and feelings. Like I was placed in a doll-house copy of what I remembered as home.
It was an interesting time to be living and defining myself:
- Too Western for the East and too Eastern for the West;
- Too emancipated for some and too politically incorrect for the others;
- Rough around all edges that were to be smooth, and smooth around the topics that were supposed to be rough.
In the past years, I have fully embraced my identity of not belonging anywhere in particular or to specific places and communities. I now live in Berlin, which is as expat-filled and diverse as it gets, where you belong by not belonging. I now revisit the concept of “home” only when asked where I am from when travelling. I usually smile and say something along the lines of “it’s complicated” or “I now live in Germany”.
Today I believe that what I am longing for is not lost, as it might not be given in the first place. Instead, maybe belonging is to be acquired, defined and redefined throughout our journeys. Maybe, a feeling of unity and connectedness is not achieved through a place, but instead you can catch glimpses of it through people, streets, smells, food, and surroundings. Maybe I belong in the ocean, where I feel at home. Or maybe I am most belonging in the air, where an airplane is taking me to another destination where my foot has yet to land. Maybe, I belong with my partner, whose caring exhale reminds me to exhale myself. Maybe, belonging isn’t a permanent state. Maybe, longing for belonging is my motivation for creating space for myself and other wanderers in this world. Maybe, it is about finding people who feel like home. Maybe, it is about creating a home in your community. It may be that longing for belonging is a part of the journey, a search for destiny and happiness, instead of a confirmation of departure and destination points.
© Ekaterina Reymarova, 2023
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