“Hi, I’m Madeline. Nice to meet you,” she says.
“Hi, I’m Demi. Nice to meet you, too,” I say as we shake hands.
“Debbie?”
“No, Demi.”
“I’m sorry, what was that?” she asks.
“Demi. Like Demi Lovato or Demi Moore,” I respond.
“Ohhh, okay. You have an accent. Where are you from?” she asks, and fireworks immediately go off in my brain.
The mention of my accent in the beginning of the conversation kills me inside. People don’t realize that it’s almost like saying, “You’re not from here, so you’re an outsider, you are an alien.” I don’t like the word “alien” when it’s used to refer to immigrants. It’s probably one of the most discriminatory words in the English language.
I don’t even know where to tell people I’m from. It is hard for many immigrants to relate with one country more than another. I feel like I’m somewhere in between my two countries – Lithuania and the United States. I feel like I don’t belong to either of them anymore. I’m a foreigner in the States and I’m too “Americanized” in Lithuania. Now, I can’t even perfectly speak my mother tongue because sometimes the code-switching between two languages becomes too difficult.
If I say I’m only from Lithuania, I strip myself of my childhood because I spent my developmental years in the United States. Even though I haven’t been in the States for a long time, the experience grew deeply into my bones and forced me to mature. The years spent here significantly shaped my personality and who I am today. On the contrary, if I say I’m from Connecticut, that strips away my cultural identity. American sociologist David C. Pollock describes how this feels very accurately:
“A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents' culture. The TCK frequently builds relations to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any.
“Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK's life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.”
“I’m from Lithuania,” I answer, this way justifying where my accent is from, and hoping that this response won’t be followed by another question.
“Oh… cool. How’s the transition going?” This kills me again. I went to high school in New York and Connecticut. Now, in college, I always get asked the same question. In moments like these, I sympathize with celebrities who have to tell their stories over and over again to journalists. How many times do I have to tell the same story to people? No matter how long you have lived here, how much you’ve achieved, to a person that you’ve just met, you’ll always be “a foreigner.” It's like taking all of my accomplishments and throwing them in the garbage. Some domestic students don’t even know that in order to get into an American prep school or college we are required to take the TOEFL exam (an English-language test) and that many of us have been taught English since kindergarten.
Some say that being different is cool, but it’s hard. Especially when someone accentuates your differences on a daily basis and their accentuation is based on ignorance.
While I was attending a boarding school in Connecticut, I felt included into the community and people weren’t conscious of the fact that I’m from Lithuania. In college, however, I became “an exotic object” or “the other” because barely anyone knows what Lithuania is like. They assume that it must be different from the States. I was always very surprised that not only students, but professors made me feel inferior.
“Read the script,” the professor told us. She picked on every one of us to read. Then it was my turn. “Stop! You have an accent!” she yelled after I read two sentences. “So you have to compensate for it by enunciating more.” Never in my life had I heard someone say that I had to compensate for my accent. It’s like someone telling me that I have to compensate for a porcelain teacup that accidentally fell from my hands in a store and smashed into pieces. The only difference is that in my case, I will never fully compensate for the damage, because cup after cup will keep on falling from my hands and shattering, and I’ll try to pick it up and the glass will cut the skin of my fingertips and it will bleed and bleed. I’ll keep on pulling dollar bills from my pocket, trying to compensate for the broken cups until I run out of money, my credit goes to negative, and I’m broke.
I’ll never lose my accent at this point, and it is a part of my identity. I am not ashamed of it. I just don’t like it being my first identifier, the first thing people notice or the sign of being some sort of “alien.”
The professor made me feel so self-conscious when I spoke that I refused to speak in both of her classes. I like to participate in class and express my opinion, but I couldn’t get over the invisible barrier, the complex that she created within me. I thought that if I spoke I wouldn’t be able to tame my “wild tongue,” as Gloria Anzaldúa would say. Even when I did speak, I felt like I was doing something wrong.
The question “Where are you from?” irritates a lot of third-culture-kids and students of color, and my international friends at Emerson were sometimes the only ones who could comfort me.
Now, when asked where I’m from, I simply want to respond with this quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” I just know that wherever I live, I have to make it feel like home, because I can’t live feeling like an alien who landed on a different planet and left her heart and soul across the ocean.
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Demi Vitkute is a dreamer, believer, achiever, and an aspiring writer. She can’t start her day without a cup of coffee and relieves stress by dancing alone in her room or going on long walks.