My name is Sueda, but I’m also Sue.

I speak English, Turkish, French, and Arabic.

My blood is Turkish, my accent is American, but my heart? Undecided.

In a world where names and ages attempt to define individuals,

I find myself struggling not to be confined within the limitations of a few pages.

My story runs deeper than the surface; it is an intricate tapestry woven across three distinct countries, shaped by unseen battles and quiet transformations.

I was often looked at as a fool for believing my dual identity could be free, but we live in a world where, if they can’t place you in a box, they simply label you as “other.”

Born in Turkey, my childhood carried the scent of distant lands long before I understood what longing was. The world pulled me into new places, new skies, new songs…

and with every move, I found myself both losing and finding pieces of who I was meant to be.

Change did not ask for permission; it swept through my life like a storm, teaching me that home is not always a place; sometimes it’s a memory, a voice, a feeling tucked deep within the soul.

I grew up learning that survival often meant adaptation, and that in trying to belong everywhere, I sometimes felt like I belonged nowhere at all. In my attempt to mold myself into something “acceptable,” I let parts of myself blur the vibrant colors of my identity muted in exchange for a quieter, safer existence.

It took years stretching years to understand that belonging was never about fitting in. It was about standing firm in the soil of who I truly am.

My path has gifted me wisdom that no classroom or map ever could. If you asked me to name myself with a single word, I would hesitate, because I am too many things to be reduced to just one word.

Still, if I had to choose, I would say: unique.

Because my identity is not static. It is alive growing, stretching, breaking, healing

a testament to the resilience born of a life lived between borders and beyond definitions.

I grew up understanding that home isn’t always a place. Sometimes it’s a memory.

Sometimes it’s a wound.

Trying to belong became a silent war inside me. I bent myself into shapes that weren’t mine.

I softened parts of myself that were never meant to be dulled.

And somewhere along the way,

I lost so many pieces of me, shattered them against the cold walls of acceptance, left them behind on the altar of belonging.

But now I see it, those pieces were never meant for this world to understand.

They were fragments of something eternal. I’ve realized that I don’t belong to a city, a nation, or a label.

I belong to Heaven.

My soul was never meant to fit in a place built by human hands. It was crafted for something far beyond.

As I continue down the winding path of self-discovery, I know now that my essence cannot be confined by a few words, or tucked neatly into a nationality, or captured by a language.

I belong to every place I loved,

I belong to every culture that has shaped me,

I belong to every language that has found its way to my tongue.

I am from three countries, not one.

I am from three cultures and four languages.

I am from Turkey, Africa, from every silent prayer and every loud dream. I am not fighting my duality anymore — I am embracing it.

My name is Sueda, but I’m also Sue.

I speak English, Turkish, French, and Arabic.

My blood is Turkish, my accent is American, but my heart?