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All my life I have felt an incompletness in my identity. It was something that really bothered me and I never could fill it with anything authentic enough. If all becomes well and I could go back “home” I would be able to fill the craters of my being with real personal experiences of my country. It would be a chance to feel, taste, touch, and smell my origins first hand.

All my life the happy stories and accounts about my country have been related to me through the nostalgic rose-tinted memories of my family. What is created is a utopian paradise for which I yearn to belong to.

There is another side of my country that I experience, one that is the total opposite. It is a scarier, more troubling facade that I see propagated in TV, newspapers and the media.

My country has been in crisis ever since I was born. For 25 years it has been ruled by a ruthless dictator who’s war crimes are on par with the likes of Hitler and Stalin. My family is one of millions that fled these past years to escape the villainous clutches of this repulsive “leader” and his horde of conspirers.

The bloodshed that has been going on in my land since we left has cast a dark and heartbreaking shadow over my country. Colours of massacre and death muddy the pretty landscape that was created in the image of the homeland. There are few who have not felt the tragic effects of this evil regime, and many have lost loved ones to it. I think about this every day of my life and thank god for being one of the fortunate ones.

It is this point that makes me hesitate in going back. I don’t know if I can face all that sadness, grief and misery. To see my parents’ dreams as the cracked utopia it always has been. A dirty canvas ruined beyond repair.

Also with the sadness comes the guilt of being the fortunate one. How can I look in the eyes of those who suffered and answer them why them and not me? An unasked question that lies heavy in the air unsaid and untold.

But there is a greater fear. What if I don’t fit in? What if I find out what I keep referring to as my country is infact too different from me to be mine! Ofcourse if I walk amongst the people in the streets and shops I will for the first time in my life, fit in like a native member as we share the same external characteristics, same language, accent. But deep down I am very different from those in my country in my references, my experiences and my ideas. The answer to that question will be most difficult to face if it comes out to be in the negative, as that would confirm that in fact I don’t belong.