A lot of diasporic art and writing is about being torn between two cultures. Like if the ground is splitting below you, and your feet are on opposite sides, and everything is pulling you in those two different directions. We contain multitudes. How do you embrace, honor and remember one side without lessening or forgetting the other? Not fully belonging here, not fully belonging there. Understanding how one may interact with the other, the violence, the histories, the roots allowed to sprout and the ones left to fester. Finding a new culture can be born of the others. We are not our parents and grandparents, but we are not yet our children. Growing up I remember being confused as to why I was left feeling like I did not relate to this narrative. It was about feeling out of place, and I was certainly out of place too. So then, what was this bittersweetness that had made a burrow out of the deepest pits of my stomach? Back then I could not find words for it, but now I realize I was simply wondering what happens when your identity is not severed in half. Or in thirds. Maybe it's too splintered, or somehow not splintered at all because how can it be if you can't even make sense of where the shards are, or how many there are supposed to be in the first place. How do you begin to retrace and reconnect with cultures if you cannot even situate which is supposed to belong to you, or more so which you are supposed to belong to? My parents are the ones that experienced the diaspora of being first and second gen somewhere, left to pick up the culture of where they were born and reared, but then I was raised across three countries that have nothing to do with where my family had begun to put down roots. I find myself with no concrete origin I can share with others, but also without a cultural upbringing in common that comes with growing up in one place, any place, the latter of which I find to be the most disorienting one (although I would have been so satisfied with either). Maybe it would not be so hard trying to find the components of the equation if at least one part was more fixed; more tangible. What is it like to know? To have something to be split between, you need to know first. I remember feeling so guilty for my envy of those who did know, who could know. I recognize that with globalization this is becoming more and more common. How do you find solace in belonging somewhere if you are aware you don't have specific communities to reconnect with, bind to, bond with? I find it hard to articulate or even write about my own shade of diaspora, if the definition can be stretched to include it. Curious to know if there will be more art that grapples with this sentiment as more and more third culture kids (and beyond) are made.