TWO WORLDS: Belonging, Identity, and My American Journey

In 2016, I landed in a country I had only known through movies, stories, and second-hand dreams—
The United States of America.

I grew up in India, literally on the other side of the world. A place with chaos, color, noise, culture, and flaws that I still call home. A place often labeled a “third world country,” and because of that label, I always carried a quiet fear: that people here would see me through that lens too.

Nine years have passed since I moved. And in these nine years, I have witnessed something clearly—
people from my country long to come here, and for good reason.
Here, sky is the limit.
If you have the tenacity, the consistency, the grit—doors will open. There are endless ways to earn, to grow, to build a life. That part is true. That part is real.

But what’s also real is this:

I have never truly felt like I belong here.
Not yet.

When I look around, I rarely see people who look like me. That simple fact can make me feel invisible and painfully aware of my “outsider” status. Sometimes the loneliness is so heavy that I turn to social media to find people thousands of miles away—people who look like me, think like me, and might understand what it means to be from where I’m from. I search for familiarity in strangers because the world around me often feels foreign.

It’s a strange kind of emptiness—
to build a life in a land where the language is borrowed, the faces are unfamiliar, and the culture never fully wraps itself around you. I speak their language, I follow their customs, I blend in as best as I can. But blending in is not the same as belonging.

Sometimes it feels like I’m acting in someone else’s movie—same scenes, same roads, same routines, yet never quite mine.
The people are different.
Their thoughts are different.
The food, the humor, the mindset—different.
Every day comes with a small sacrifice: a sacrifice of identity, of comfort, of that effortless sense of being understood without having to explain yourself.

I can admit this openly now:

My country may be dirty. My city may be chaotic. My people may have flaws. But they are my own.
That is my root. That is home.

When I smell the streets of India, when I hear the languages, when I see faces like mine—I feel the warmth of belonging without effort. I don’t have to try. I don’t have to pretend. I don’t have to “blend.”

Here, in America, I am building a life, yes. I am achieving things I once only dreamed of, yes. But deep down, there is a constant ache—a whisper reminding me that none of this is truly mine. That sense of “amar”—of my own—is missing.

I am living between two worlds:
one where I came from,
and one I’m trying to make a home.

Maybe someday I’ll feel like I belong.
Maybe someday this land will feel like mine.
But today, I’m still searching.