I LOOK LIKE I BELONG HERE. I DON’T.

At the mall one weekend, I was standing in a restaurant entryway while I waited for my lunch order to be called. Lunar New Year festivities were happening, with groups of teenagers in colorful costumes parading down the halls to booming drumbeats. When I turned back to wait for my order, an older woman nearby started speaking in Hiligaynon. It took me a second to realize that she was actually talking to me. I looked at her and saw she was motioning toward the festival. My chest tightened and I felt the familiar pull of wanting to shrink. In an apologetic, slightly embarrassed tone, I told her that I don’t speak Hiligaynon. She looked surprised and automatically switched to English, saying, “Oh, you’re not from here?” I shook my head and then she proceeded to ask her question. I mumbled a polite response but was already somewhere else.

She walked away and I thought about how quickly she’ll forget about this interaction. I won’t, though. I never do. I’d been carrying this feeling longer than I’d realized.

I’d first learned it at a table surrounded by family. At huge gatherings, everyone was seated together for dinner. Parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents were on one side, and all the kids were on the other. The Tagalog and Hiligaynon coming from across the room was background noise to the rest of us cousins. Once, I turned to my aunt and asked what they were talking about. She paused, said something brief — not quite an answer — and the conversation moved on. She had her own world to return to. I turned back to my cousins and went back to our own.

Back then, it simply felt like a gap. I didn’t yet know what I was on the outside of.

I anticipated that the language was going to be a barrier when I decided to move to Iloilo. What I didn’t expect was that without it, I couldn’t fully show up as myself. And that there was no one around me who truly understood what that felt like. What makes it more disorienting is that I don’t look the part either — taller, more fair-skinned, another layer of not quite fitting.

This pattern of being “found out” happens constantly. Locals speak to me in Hiligaynon, I correct them apologetically, they switch to English. I feel guilty for making them accommodate me — and I sit with the weight of an exchange they’ve already forgotten about. What complicates things further is that I can’t tell the difference between Hiligaynon and Tagalog. Either way, I’m always on the outside of the conversation, wondering what’s going on. My dad, who is from Caloocan and whose first language is Tagalog, doesn’t fully blend in here in Iloilo either. Even he — undeniably, unambiguously Filipino — hits a wall, which quietly dismantles the idea that there’s one right version of belonging to reach for. Yet both of my parents can move through Filipino life more easily than I can overall.

I don’t know anyone else navigating this exact combination. The language gap, the physical difference and the vertigo of returning to a place that’s supposed to be yours. I’m going through this without a single person beside me who understands it from the inside.

The daily life inconveniences don’t help either, like unpredictable power outages, inconsistent water supply and chaotic traffic. But those I can adapt to. It’s the loneliness of feeling foreign in your own culture, in your own bloodline, that feels more overwhelming to face.

The grief arrived slowly and then all at once.

Kaye is my sister and my best friend, and this is the first time in our lives that we’ve been apart without knowing when we’ll see each other again. I hold onto our daily video calls with more gratitude than I knew I had. It’s how I watch my niece grow up in real time, nine thousand miles away. I take screenshots of the calls and tell myself it’s enough. It isn’t. I’m a photographer. I should be there.

I miss the freedom that takes over when I move my hips to bachata and find the improv in salsa at my favorite socials in DC. The way you recognize a friend’s face in the crowd and hug each other like it’s been months, even though you danced together a few nights ago. I miss hopping in the car to meet my girlfriends for boba and pastries — and the kind of heart-to-heart talks that leave you feeling seen and inspired.

But I don’t think I want to go back to the way things were.

For ten years I’ve been moving toward this — toward making my art, seeing the world and building a life that actually feels like my own. This was the right time. I know it.

The life I’m building is the one I consciously chose. The people I left behind are the ones I’d take with me if I could.

Iloilo hasn’t given me everything I left behind. But it’s given me things I didn’t know I was missing.

I grew up with my uncle in the States, and he retired here a few years ago. One day, my parents and I were having lunch at his house. When he placed the bowl of lugaw in front of me, the scent of ginger and fried garlic filled the air. It was so hot coming right off the stove. But I took a bite anyway and tasted all the comforting flavors of the childhood dish he used to make for me whenever I got sick. It felt like a welcome home.

My uncle feels like a piece of my American life that was already here when I arrived. He knew me as a curious little girl at the family table who couldn’t follow the conversation. And he knows me now as the adult who’s navigating a new life still without the language. He makes me feel welcome and loved in both versions of myself.

He’s not the only one. My family here has shown up for me in ways I didn’t expect at all. They have taken me around the city, introduced me to their world and made space for me without requiring anything from me in return.

Being known across time. I think that’s what I’ve been looking for all along.

Locals still speak to me in Hiligaynon, and I still feel apologetic when they switch to English. It will keep happening.

But something has shifted in how I handle that feeling. I’ve been searching for recognition from a woman who forgot me before she reached the end of the hall. What I was looking for was already at my uncle’s table.

She doesn’t need to recognize me. My family already does.

Belonging is already present in the people who have known me across time, distance and the language I never had.