Most of my closest friends are Latina. We get along extremely well and I love each of them. We laugh together, cry together and burst into spontaneous musical theater numbers together. Most of the time I fit right in, and I forget that we come from different ethnicities. Then moments happen like what I experienced during our recent get together. During the middle of tell a story one of my friends said something in Spanish that made everyone in the group laugh, except for me of course because I don’t speak Spanish. As usual, in this situation I just sat, waiting for the laughter to die down and for some one to explain it to me. Whenever this situation arises my connection with my closest friends feels as though it is beginning to shrivel away. I can’t relate to their laughter and instantly feel as though I don’t belong in this friend group. Many times I would hate myself for not learning Spanish in middle and high school, and I would wish that I was born into a Spanish speaking family. In a matter of seconds, I went from feeling like I belonged to feeling so displaced I just wanted to get up and leave (which sometimes I actually did when I first started feeling this displacement). Displacement is a feeling that can come at any moment of life; even when you are surrounded by people you love.
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First, I must say this is great example of displacement. Definitely a relateable topic and something that people look past everyday. When I think of this type of situation,I think of myself actually being in the other side of the spectrum. Throughout high school, in my tight group of friends their were two Bengali guys and two Black guys. My Bengali friend and I would sometimes talk in Bengali amongst one another and make fun of my other two friends. They had no idea what we would say and we would just laugh over it. My friends would just say, “here we go again” and walkaway for a moment and come right back when we were done. Since Bengali wasn’t a language that you could be taught in school, when those moments happened in the future, my friends would start asking about it, and try learning it. It was actually really cool. Today they practically know all of the curse words and some small sentence starters. I never once thought aboht putting someone in a displaced situation, until I read this entry. Great read!!!