When the Dream Isn’t Built for You

On belonging, bias, and building anyway

There’s a kind of silence that follows you when you move through spaces not built for you.
It’s quiet, but heavy — like walking through glass walls.
You can see everything clearly,
but you can’t quite touch what others seem to reach with ease.

People call it opportunity.
I’ve learned it’s also architecture.
The dream wasn’t designed with everyone in mind.

I used to take rejection personally —
another unanswered email, another door closed politely.
Now I see it as part of a larger pattern,
the quiet filtering of who gets seen as capable,
who gets invited in.

Still, I build.
Because waiting for permission is another way of disappearing.

Switzerland has taught me many things —
how to slow down,
how to find peace in solitude,
how to recognize what safety costs.
It’s beautiful here.
But beauty doesn’t cancel truth.

Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like
to live somewhere that mirrors me back,
where the systems were not built to question my right to belong.
But until then, I make my own mirrors.
I write. I create. I speak.

Because even when the dream isn’t built for you,
you can still carve your reflection into its walls.

And maybe that’s what belonging really is —
not waiting to fit in,
but building something true enough
for others to see themselves inside it too.