Dual Citizen

It's different from being an expat. And it's different from being a nomad or a 'citizen of the world'. Although those can be true too.

Being of two countries from birth is complex.

It is probably the most privileged you can get – especially when you combine the safety and security of Switzerland with the vast, rugged beauty of Canada.

The Alps remind me of the Rockies. They seem to have the same grasses and colours and trees. And they are not the same. Switzerland is vertical: deep, but narrow. Canada is horizontal: shallow, but expansive.

My heart belongs in both places. My humour, my language, my intellect belong to Switzerland. My body, my spirit, my work belong to Canada.

I am two. Of two.

And I can never be quite home. Home is always 'there' when I am here. A part of me is always missing, a piece of my identity somehow absent, the exact space I'm holding for my life in the other place.

I'm bilingual, born, raised, and educated in Switzerland – but my creativity needed a place to recover from that very dense, compact, political box. I've lived in many other places, spoken other languages, but somehow my blood knows when I'm on land I belong to. One or the other.

I've settled in Canada.

I only speak Swiss German through screens, and my mother calls my English 'Mickey Mouse voice' because my pitch is higher. I lose some of my silliness. Absurd language humour doesn't work in a place where pop culture references mean everything. Especially when my silly words get mistaken for mistakes.

Liberation feels closer here, even though there’s no political left. Maybe because there’s a few hundred yards between me and my next door neighbour and we’re not cramming into trains together every morning.

There are so many things deeply wrong and beautiful in both places, but who I want to be today is expansive. And maybe that will change.

I am always of two. It hurts a little and it’s an incredible gift:

I get to be two instead of just one, always able to find refuge in the other.