unbalanced
I live in Austria, and there is something quietly unsettling about being asked where I “originally” come from. It’s not shame—Serbia is nothing I tuck away like a secret. My childhood there is stitched with warmth, with stories that still glow, with sorrows that shaped me in ways I do not regret. If someone approaches me with genuine curiosity, I’m delighted to open that door. I can talk for hours about the stubborn hospitality of the people I know, or the way laughter and hardship often sit at the same table, elbows touching, like two relatives who don’t particularly like each other but refuse to leave the family gathering.
What troubles me is something far more delicate. The question slips into the room like an uninvited hand opening a private drawer. It carries an intimacy I never consented to—almost like being asked about the balance of my bank account, except with slightly worse manners. Because once I answer “Serbia,” something shifts—quietly, invisibly, but unmistakably. The ground between us tilts. Suddenly, you stand on a slightly higher step, as if my answer has granted you a small, unearned elevation. It’s subtle, but it’s there: the sense that your roots are firmer, your belonging more legitimate, your place here more natural than mine.
It is this imbalance—not my origins—that unsettles me. The way a simple question can rearrange the architecture of a conversation, turning what could have been an exchange between equals into a subtle hierarchy neither of us explicitly chose. A single sentence—“Where do you come from?”—can redraw the map of the moment, shifting borders I never agreed to, borders I thought we had left behind. It’s impressive, really, how much geopolitical power can be packed into five innocent words.
There is also a thin thread of fear woven into the moment I’m asked where I come from. Not a dramatic fear but a quiet, persistent one, the kind that settles in the body after too many small wounds. It’s the fear of the pause that follows my answer. From time to time, I’ve met reactions that sting more than they should: a sharp, almost mocking “Aren’t there any universities in Serbia?” or the sudden cooling of a person’s voice once they hear a trace of my story. I’ve watched people invent polite excuses to end a conversation the moment my background becomes visible. And I still remember the job interview where a potential employer told me, without hesitation or embarrassment, that he “has to pay me less because my Serbian accent would be a disadvantage to his business.” (A bold strategy, really—insulting someone and admitting to wage discrimination in the same breath.)
These moments accumulate. They do not shout; they whisper. But their whispers pile up until they form a kind of truth you can no longer ignore. They teach me that the question “Where do you come from?” is not always an invitation to share a story. Sometimes it is a test. Sometimes it is a sorting mechanism. Sometimes it is a quiet reminder of the boundaries others believe exist—boundaries I never agreed to, but which I am expected to respect. And each time it happens, a small part of me braces, wondering which version of the question I’m about to receive: the curious one, or the one that carries judgment folded neatly inside it like a passive‑aggressive love letter.
And so I answer, every single time, but I answer with the awareness that my words may shift the air between us. I answer knowing that what I reveal might be used to place me somewhere on an invisible map I did not draw. I answer because I am not ashamed, because I refuse to shrink myself to avoid someone else’s discomfort. But I am nonetheless tired—tired of proving, again and again, that my presence in the conversation does not require approval, not even from the imaginary committee of Austrians living inside my head.
