Time Is Not Kind But We Can Be

Getting our Visas in NYC for the big move in 1991!

I think most people who know me know that I went to high school overseas - Buenos Aries, Argentina - 1992-1995 to be exact. You are probably laughing if you know me well - thinking to yourself - How could I not know? You mention it a lot. It has become something of an inside joke among my ex-Pat friends that people tease us about how often we talk about it.

There is a reason we mention it quite a bit even in casual conversation. That was more than an experience with a beginning and an end. It was formative  - permanently changing the trajectory of who we were to become and who we are today. It is part of the narrative of our lives and of ourselves.

Moving to another country at any age feels like being dropped on another planet - especially if you don’t know the culture or the language or you look nothing like the people who live in that country.  It shakes your foundation. Strips you bare. Causes you to confront questions about who you are really. How much of your personality is influenced by your native culture? What needs to be learned to assimilate to this new culture? Is it possible? Is it advisable? How does it feel? Will anything ever feel “normal or stable” again?

Plus it happens quickly. Even if you know it is coming. Confronting the shift in real-time feels too fast for the brain and body to process. Like you are living in a dream state for a long period of time. Things seem both heightened and far away concurrently. Culture shock is a real thing. 

To be honest, I felt a little of that at the beginning of the pandemic. The world as we know it turned upside down. We had to figure out how to navigate the new COVID world and confront things about who we were going to be in this new “land”. I got through it by reminding myself that we were all handling it in ways that made sense to us at the moment.  I understand that people made choices some of us as individuals would never personally make and sometimes the confusion and anger over that felt all-consuming. This is a good reminder that ultimately the only thing you have control over is your perceptions, reactions, and behaviors.

I am going to let you in on a little secret, humans adapt fairly quickly to new realities. After about 6 months, most people found a stable equilibrium in their life overseas. You start to “be” part of that new world and it becomes your reality. I watched that happen with COVID. I am not saying many of us haven’t had ups and downs in the time after 6 months. We have all of us been through some stressful stuff.  However, we adapted. Sometimes it even felt like the new COVID reality would last forever.

Yet here we stand with time moving more quickly than we can process and rapid change confronting us yet again. 

I am going to let you in on an even bigger little secret, when you are an ex-Pat, as much as you make a life in your new place, you remember your old world and think about what it will be like when you return. You play out scenes and have little fantasies about the good stuff and how it will feel. I saw that and did it myself with COVID. I can’t wait to do blah, blah, blah again. I will be so excited when I can XYZ again.

I know better.

Because I am going to let you in on the biggest secret of all. The one most Third Culture Kids are incredibly reluctant to discuss. As hard as culture shock and new realities are reverse culture shock will almost take you out.

When I re-entered the US at age 18, I became incredibly depressed.  I wasn’t sure I would make it. It was too much to reconcile what I imagined with what was. The country had changed. I had changed. This time I looked and talked like everyone around me but I didn’t think or know how to act like them. All that dissonance was not what I was hoping for. I was hoping to return “home”. I am not the only one. My fellow TCKs and I have spoken about this in hushed whispers. How difficult re-entry was. How we suffered in silence in solitary because this was before social media allowed us to reconnect. (It was barely even at the beginning of email as a communication medium. We are old.) 

Now with the view of a grown woman, I can see it plain as day. I was grieving. Mourning the loss of an idea vs. a reality.  And, I had no support system in place. I am quite lucky that I finally met a group of wonderful humans at college who helped me through that time with loving-kindness. Plus, I got help from my family, doctors and medications, and therapy. 

We collectively have so much to process from the last 15 months. Grief abounds in society and individually right now and that won’t magically disappear with new mandates. In fact, some of them might heighten that feeling for some. 

I have one wish for all of us as we begin the next part of this COVID stuff - BE KIND. Some people will be excited to embrace every new shift coming out from public health experts. Some won’t. Some will have anxiety about all kinds of things. Some will be bold. Or have sadness or happiness hit them in weird ways. Don’t judge them too harshly. There are many things we have learned about how to feel safer personally during this pandemic. Everyone still has the right to do those things. I think if there is any clear positive from this it is that mental health is now recognized as health much more broadly than ever before in society at large. Find a support system to help you navigate your way “home”.

We control so very little in this world. Time marching on is completely out of our control as are the inevitable shifts that brings. Many times those shifts don’t feel kind. However, we can control our choice to be kind and give a little grace and do the things for ourselves and our families that we think are right. 

Please know that if you struggle more with “returning” than you did to the “new reality” that is normal.  The most important person to be kind to is yourself.