These things are no longer normal to me since I left the US

It takes me a minute to respond when people ask me where I am from.

Bogotá Art

My inner dialogue instantly goes wild. I go from, well, technically, I am from the US, my passport is from the US, and I was born and bred a Southerner, which will never change.

My identity as being from the good ole US of A will always remain. Of course, unless I get another passport and officially emigrate and change, but I will still be from the States. Usually, when people ask this question, they assume I have just come from there; it becomes a long introduction of me saying, at first, the US.

Then they want to know where I live and work, and then I have to go into the I left five years ago and do not technically have a home; I prefer to say I most recently have been living in Colombia.

Then I don’t have to go into an entire dissertation about how I am homeless and live out of a backpack. Sometimes I say in the same breath the US, but I left over five years ago, and most recently, I was in Colombia. Short and sweet, and then I meet people traveling abroad, and I realize if I say I am from the US, it feels almost fake now.

So many things that my sister and her friends here do that are so very ¨American¨ that I no longer do, and…