Home(?) away from home.

In a society dominated by close-mindedness and concern over what other people think all the time, I have finally stopped pretending, and came to the full realisation that I do not belong here.

The best way to describe Maltese culture with one word, in my opinion, would be: rigid. What's done is expected by and done for the public eye, out of fear of becoming a social outcast or simply being labeled as weird. So it's one continuous cycle of people repeating each other's actions over and over again, and for the natives who have spent all their lives in this country, it has become second nature where practically no thought has ever been given into it.

On a side note, there is this somewhat growing pressure of people wanting to be rebellious and original, but that too has become redundant with young people copying each other's methods of standing out, turning them into trends and fashion rather than lifestyle. You can tell that it's a pit full of fake and therefore temporary attitudes, giving off misleading and false characteristics covering up nothing more than a typical individual doing just what everyone else is trying to do. I don't believe that one can simply decide to be this new person one day and live this new lifestyle all of a sudden. Either you are that person from birth, where you've always been that way, always did certain things, or you're just trying to change to fit in, only to give up on the whole idea once it's gone out of fashion.

Back to the point, there are certain traits I possess which I inherited from the other side of the world which I cannot express in this society. Although it's all very hard to analyse, a portion of the blame goes to the Maltese language which is very limited, not only in vocabulary, but also in use of tone and emotion, and I believe you can only truly understand this if you didn't grow up here.

There are things that I find absolutely normal which people here would consider just plain weird. Elsewhere in the world people wouldn't give these things a second thought but here, probably due to the small size of this country, there is so much pressure put on you from people constantly on your back that they're always going to monitor you, and once you do something outside their rigid boundaries, there's officially something weird about you.

I am a very quiet person by nature, I'm an introvert by choice but I know how to speak up when I feel the need to. This has most likely been interpreted by a lot of people either as snobbery where people seem to think that I believe that I'm better than everyone else or as dislike towards the people I'm mostly quiet to.

This can sort of be illustrated in a way. Different people stand side by side in a row. Each person is very unique, with their own personal traits, hobbies, level of intelligence, and so on. In Malta, some of these people are faded out and don't exist, while a handful are set on bold and define the whole society. There is no one in between.

I am one of those people who stand in between, but don't exist here. I cannot express myself in certain ways because of close-mindedness which makes it hard for people to understand who I really am and what I do, coupled with the limitations in vocabulary.

It's been a decade and I've never really completely been myself here, and I never really will be, as long as I stay in Malta.