Thoughts and Ramblings on Cultural Readjustment

It has been about three and a half months since I set foot in the US. It has been good and awful all at the same time. There is a part of my brain that recognizes that I have moved back, and the other half of my brain that does not recognize that I have moved back. And the two sides war with each other constantly.

People often ask me how I am doing and honestly, it is hard to answer that question. How do you explain to someone what it is to move back to a culture you no longer understand? How do you express in words all the thoughts, feelings and emotions that tumble around your brain on a daily basis. Most of the time, my answer to the question "How are you adjusting?" is this way: Slowly.

What gets frustrating is when people press me for the reasons of why readjustment is slow. Or what specifically it is that I experience when I say I go through reverse culture shock. I do not how to answer those questions well because sometimes it is something that happens in a moment - for instance, a month or so ago when I found myself sitting outside the house after 11 p.m. in my pj's staring at the biggest, brightest, fullest moon I had seen since leaving Slovakia. I cried that night. I missed Slovakia that night. Why? Because I used to fall asleep basking in the moon beams streaming across my laminate wood floor in my flat in Bystrica.

Other times it is something unexpected and seemingly unnatural - like the time I found myself nearly hyperventilating while at a baby shower because I was in a crowded room full of people, some of whom I knew and some of whom I did not, and feeling overwhelmed with the fact that I could understand what they said because they were speaking English, but confused because I did not understand what they said because I do not always understand current cultural cues and references.

These are just a two examples. Sometimes the culture shock is obvious; other times is is not at all. And it is very hard to express verbally exactly what it is like or how it affects me. I want the phrase, "It just does not make sense to me!" to be a satisfactory answer to a question without someone saying, "But why?" And it is exhausting hearing someone say, "But you grew up here. How can it be that different now?" That is when I want to yell, "It just is! Please just allow me that!"

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all readjustment period. Sometimes I feel like I am almost defending my current situation in life, which I do not like, when I get the funny looks or the "Well, just do x,y and z and you will be fine" kind of advice which is both unhelpful and hurtful because it is just not that easy. Or I go to the other extreme and just do not talk about it, thus repressing the true nature of what I am going through, which I also do not like.

The hardest part of cultural readjustment is when you have no support base, and by that I mean a support system of other people who have gone through the same thing of moving away to live in another country/culture for a period of time and then moved back to their country of origin. I have been fortunate to meet with a few people since moving back who have gone through this and it helps being able to talk things through with them, but for the most part, most of my friends and family have no idea what it is like and it is hard to express to them my thoughts; and in turn, hard for them to be able to understand. Not that they do not try because they do! But it is not always possible for them relate or understand.

A friend sent me an article she found in the Wall Street Journal that verbalized so much of what I feel but have had a hard time trying to explain and make sense of. The article, titled Combating the Repatriation Blues, is an excellent and insightful read for anyone who is either repatriating him- or herself, or knows someone in the process of repatriating. Here are three quotes that really spoke to me:

"Most people find coming home to be a more difficult transition than going abroad. One of the difficulties of returning is that no one who hasn't done it expects it to be difficult," [Craig Storti, author of The Art of Coming Home] said. "Everyone thinks it must be easy to come home so the support network is not there."

"If you go through the normal stages of transition, the leaving phase is still when you are looking ahead and not really dealing with the loss, which hits you when you get back and begin to settle in," says Ruth van Reken, co-author of Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds. "But the losses are hidden; how do you explain this loss of a world you quite enjoyed but is now gone? This is why unresolved grief is the number one long-term issue for adult TCKS, as well as many adult expats. Every transition involves loss... even when there is gain."

"The struggle to adjust really begins when the initial high of moving to a new place or back to an old home wears off," says Allegra Richards. Now a senior at Harvard, Ms. Richards was born in New York, but mostly grew up in Switzerland and Moscow, where her family still resides. The duration of the honeymoon period varies, but generally the wave of sadness and nostalgia hits during the first six months. There are things a repatriating citizen can do to anticipate the major shocks of returning home. But it is often the things you can't expect that make the sadness most difficult to deal with -- you can't anticipate the little things you will miss the most from the place you left behind."

When I read articles like this, it makes me want to weep and rejoice all at the same time because it helps me make sense of me, and helps reaffirm that no, I am not crazy, nor am I ridiculous. It takes time to readjust. It takes time for repatriation. There is no magic formula, and I cannot just make it go away. It takes time, and time is what I need to give it and should give it.