My return to the United States brought grief and loneliness as I realized I was different from my peers.
On an early morning flight out of the country, I claimed the window seat. Alongside the usual anticipation that accompanies travel, I felt joy and fear and sadness. I don’t remember if I cried. What I do remember are the mountains, the wobbly takeoff in the rundown plane, and the small comfort of knowing that I didn’t forget anything. Everything we owned sat in the belly of the plane, packed neatly into a dozen trunks and a few suitcases.
That was almost four years ago.
Most people would never guess now that I spent my childhood as a homeschooler in northern Iraq. Our family moved to the country to serve the Kurdish church when I was six; we moved back just before I turned 18. And when we returned, I did my best to erase every trace of those years from myself.
But their impact, of course, has remained. I still blank when someone asks where I’m from. I have struggled to find an identity outside of “the girl who lived in Iraq.”
I have a tattoo of the mountains on my right forearm now, and a reference to Joshua 1:9 in Kurdish: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” The tattoo is a tether to the place that was both home and foreign, the place that I love and hate, fear and miss; the place that elicits just about every possible emotion.
That first fall back in the United States, after I graduated from high school, I moved to the Northwoods of Wisconsin for nine months to attend a gap year program. It was one of the worst years of my life. I know now that no matter where in the United States I’d been, this season would have been a dark one. I was anxious, depressed, and lost, …
