The moment I realized ‘going home’ to Malaysia meant feeling like a foreigner in my own family

I’m Dutch-Malaysian-Taiwanese, grew up in Malaysia & Netherlands , but I’ve been living in the Netherlands for years.

Last year I flew back to Malaysia thinking I’d finally feel at home. My mom’s cooking, the hawker stalls, the humid air I grew up with, all of it should have felt like mine, right?

Instead, I felt like a foreigner .

A stranger at a hawker stall interrogated my Malay accent: “You sure you Malaysian ah? You don’t sound like one.” My own relatives side-eyed me during family dinners because I was “too Western” and didn’t speak enough Chinese.

The worst part? I started to believe them. Maybe I am a fake Malaysian. Maybe I don’t belong here either.

Coming back to the Netherlands felt more like “home” than going back to Malaysia. And that realization broke something in me.

Do you know how sad that is? To fly “home” and feel like a guest?

I just wrote an essay about this, the identity rehearsal we do as diaspora kids, the PTSD of never “sounding local enough,” the versions of ourselves we perform to survive.

It’s about looking in the mirror and not recognizing your own face because you’ve lived too many versions of yourself.

If this resonates with anyone, I’d love to hear your stories. Especially if you’ve experienced the “you don’t sound local enough” interrogations.

Full story link in comments if anyone wants it 😊