Now I am here. I’m fine... - Sorana Gheorghiade

Hi, my name is Sorana, and in the last 8 years I have moved 9 times.

I had a childhood spent on the staircase of my apartment building, playing with roller skates and bicycles, with my grandmother yelling at me to come home because she had made schnitzel and it was getting cold. I was and am loved by my, middle class, but with high expectations.

In fourth grade, I got a passing grade in environmental studies because I didn't know when to plow, when to sow, and when to harvest grains and vegetables. Because my father was not used to this kind of academic failure, he told me, putting his hand on the doorframe, that people who go far in life are here. You, at the moment, are here, below. Do you know what people who are here do? They don't get anything.

And my 10-year-old mind said, you're screwed, girl! I was afraid

of what would become of me, but I didn't give up. I got into a good high school in Constanța. I wasn't some intergalactic genius, but I learned foreign languages easily and squeezed in all the extracurricular activities I could. I was firmly convinced that school in Romania wasn't good enough. I looked abroad, where even the dogs walk around with pretzels on their tails, and the quality is different, or so they say. And I wasn't the only one. One of my friends ended up in London, just like me, another in Manchester, one in Delft, another in Berlin, one in Istanbul, and another in New York. With effort, we stayed close. It was our bubble, and we wanted to keep it that way, not letting it get too big, but also not letting it burst.

London, with its 8 million inhabitants, hit me like a train. Everything was big: big distances, big crowds, big competition, big workloads. I felt tiny. Nano-Sorana.

I said to myself: you're screwed, girl. I tried to toughen up mechanically, to succeed no matter what it took, not to let my college years pass me by, but to pass them myself. I often called my mother to tell her that I had learned to cook rice and that I had shrunk another sweater in the washing machine. My friends still received packages from home, with zacusca and Eugenii Dobrogea, but I told my mother not to send me any more, that I was maintaining my life here and that was enough. I was ashamed to ask for anything else.

I thought I was grown up. Only the world was grown up, I still had some growing up to do.

In my first years of college, I still heard stories about people who had returned to Romania for various reasons that no one listened to anyway. Because the immediate response was: well, yes, because they didn't fit in there and now they've come home with their tail between their legs. In my bubble, it was hard for all of us, but no one dared to say the unspeakable: I can't take it anymore, I want to go home! So we got on with our work.

After almost five years of Mind the Gap, a few lockdowns, an employment contract, three vaccines, and three cases of COVID, we were packing boxes again. My belongings hadn't even arrived in Paris before I started all over again. We were accumulating knowledge, losing our sense of belonging.

There, and in Brussels, I acquired some vocabulary so that I could describe the small injustices I experienced: structural racism, stereotyping, cultural prejudice, xenophobia. My ears heard it all. 

One of our lawyers told me in an interview that at their firm work a lot with Romanians, that they steal.

"What, you don't know the capital of Ethiopia? You fool, they don't teach you anything at the Sorbonne!"

I also worked at a café. There, I was told to hide the cigarettes because the Romanian women at the bar would take them.

As time went by, I realized more and more that I wasn't special in any way. No matter how hard I tried to tell myself something different, being a foreigner isn't special either. Many of us left to conquer the world with our brains, and no red carpet was rolled out for us at the airport. But it wasn't necessary.

In 2022, UNESCO estimated the number of Romanian students studying abroad at over 31,000. However, the authorities in

Bucharest cannot thoroughly document the migration of great minds. In Romania, those who go to university abroad are not required to declare anything, but we know there are many of us.

I arrived in Bucharest in early 2024. And my bubble gradually returned. The questions came: "So? How did you settle in? Was it hard to come back? When are you leaving again? How long are you staying this time?"

I automatically respond with "It's fine. It's easier. It's really okay." But I realize that I didn't grow up with this theory and that it seems strange to me to be fine where everyone says it's very bad.

If we listen carefully to the people who will speak after me, we realize that, no matter how you look at it, it's hard. Find the hardship that makes you happy and be honest with yourself.

Don't praise me, because I'm no martyr. I skipped

the speech about personal sacrifice for the good of the community. I came because that's how I felt. Not to change the world, but to find my place in it. And I don't regret anything, neither going nor coming back.

The years I spent anywhere but home taught me to

weigh my words, how to ask questions, to keep quiet, to weigh all kinds of arguments, especially those I don't agree with, and most importantly, to get over failure.

I am infinitely grateful to the people who got on this train with me, who may have gotten off my car at some point, but even more so to those who waited for me at the station. You waited a long time!

It took me eight years to go from "it's bad" to "it's not that bad." I propose to stay here for a while, hoping that "it's good" will come soon. But I feel like telling you that I have stopped seeing the wait for "better" as a tragedy, as I was told long ago. Make your own decisions, without prejudice. Enter and exit your bubble, go as far as you can and come back when you feel the time is right.

Leaving is not necessarily a virtue.

Coming back is not heroism.

Take courage and go for a walk!
Let your life be truly yours:
without applause, without regrets.

I have chosen to stop here.
For now…