ArcaMax

I'm flying home in two weeks, and for the first time, I'm apprehensive. This time, I'm an official delegate representing one of my homes to another. Representing countries is a role I've had my entire life, but this has brought up an identity crisis that I had smothered with work, raising kids, and even running for office. It's thinking about who I might have been and where she'd be now.

When I campaigned for my city council position, one of the better parts was interviewing prominent people in the city and the district where I've made my home. Interviewing is one of the things I enjoy the most in life, peppering people with questions from an unspoken media machine authority. But during the campaign, I had to walk the other side of the street too. I had to let people ask me questions. I carried a new role of vulnerability in allowing not just my character to be assessed, but also my ability to belong. Belonging, for many, would mean that I would be a better shepherd rather than a wolf in shepherd's clothing.

I approached two sisters, both involved in various threads of the community. In their adobe home, they interviewed me: How long have I been in Las Cruces? Was I born here? I told them it had only been twenty years. "Ay," said a sister to the other, "she's a Crucena at this point."

I walked out later in a haze from that simple phrase. I felt like I had leveled up in the place I had claimed as my chosen home, and it might choose me back. Win or lose, I existed here, even if I haven't always been here.

I was born in Germany to a German mom and an American who was in the Air Force. I came home from the hospital to my grandparents' house, but before I was a year old, I got on a plane to the United States. Then, every three to four years, we'd move from America back to Germany, with my dad working on the same planes on different continents. My country identity was split for many years, only solidifying as a foil when I would represent what each country meant to others, especially to my Mexican husband.

There's a phrase in Spanish, "ni de aqui ni de alla," which translates to not from here, not from there. You'll hear it on the border from Mexican Americans, raised by either immigrants or first-generation parents, who have a gamut of feelings about their parents' home because that home, even if they've never been, shapes their identity in ways they can't quite control.

An online author from an account called "Generous Degenerates" ruminates about Mexico in a way that resonated with me. Another country has "a version of you that never existed but that you feel keenly connected to," that you "can fit in but not necessarily belong." It goes on to say that the place itself would know you and who you come from. However, it ends with a line I debate, that the land will "always have a place for you."

Since becoming elected, I've grappled with what a chosen home meant. Was to fiercely love a place that might not always love you back, especially when people would toss out a line of demarcation. You're not from here. You don't belong here. You are the wolf.

It's been disheartening and demoralizing and feeds a darkness of the shadow of who I could have been and where I could have been. But this land has shaped me.

During a more trying afternoon last year, another elected official caught me in a dark conference room, trying to process the effects of making hard decisions. They said that people could yell all they wanted, but had their name been on the ballot? Had they been willing to step up? No. I had. They reminded me that I loved a place enough to try and make it better as best I knew how. Even if the howls from the desert might test me, I, with love, still walk into that darkness.

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Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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