In my second stateside return, I have discovered that culture shock is an organic thing, constantly changing with each trip and each set of adjustments made in preparation for that bizarre nausea, that subtle panic and discomfort. Culture shock is a uniquely strange sensation in which one feels out of place in their own home. I believe it is true to say that home is where the heart is, but what happens when you have your heart in more than one place? Living abroad, or simply in contrasting cultures, is one special way to find that one's heart has the capacity to be just as multifaceted, if not more so, than the head. You learn that you become sentimental for the strangest things--usually the little things that you took for granted or even detested at one point or another. How else would college students bond with their parents after years of confrontation? Absence/distance makes the heart grow fonder. The problem lies in that the heart grows nostalgic and glorifies something only to find upon returning that the something is not quite what they remembered.
My culture shock experiences regarding my homeland of the US of A have had an interesting progression.Upon my return from Paris, I was shocked to find my eyes opened to the serious problem of obesity in the States. I felt frustrated by the size of everything being far too large for the good of any human being, not to mention the environment. I had remembered food as tasting better than it did upon my return and was horrified to be reminded poor quality wine sold for relatively speaking twice as much as the average bottle in France. Basically, I was shocked at the level of my own snobbery, but I found it difficult to break from such high standards when the basis was not simply the taste but the difference in nutritional importance. I wore my freshly rejuvenated francophile nature on my sleeve, much to the dismay of my loved ones, until I fell back into my daily routines of my american lifestyle. This "nausea," as Baudelaire called it, set in almost immediately and endured for relatively a week and a half. I was perhaps sentimental, but I had not spent enough time (in my opinion) growing attached to the specifics, and therefore missed only broad concepts.
This second time around, I faced a much different set of circumstances (including but not limited to physical and emotional attachment brought on by my eight month stay, personal relationships, and an obnoxious exhaustion from too much travel). These factors proved to be a much more serious combination than the last experience (of which the culmination was my consistent disappointment with the quality of croissants in the Chicagoland area). I had spent my eight months nurturing close-knit friendships with people spread across the globe, specifically those with whom I had lived in France, and who would most likely not be there if and when I returned. I had lost contact with a good many of my close college friends, consequently discovering those of my friends that meant the most to me because I made an obvious attempt to keep up with their lives. This debacle of a social situation was one element that threw my life topsy-turvy, and in combination with a new job founded in pizza and tourists, I found it difficult not to pine after my lost life abroad. This new culture shock took a few weeks to come to fruition, but it lasted nearly two months. It was one of the most difficult times I have faced, in the sense that I felt quite alone (regardless of the support of my parents and the understanding and patience of my boyfriend). I could not, for the life of me, pinpoint the source of my unhappiness, nor the reason behind my lack of motivation, nor the deep well from which constant emotional turmoil rocked my body to the point of felling physically ill.
With the promise of moving back abroad, I felt saved from myself, from my relentless restlessness. Traveling has officially become a drug--an expensive one, at that, but one with better end results and fallout than all the others. I suppose the question I am left with is this: "Le Nausea"-- Does it ever get easier? Or will I simply be forced into discovering all the hidden niches of my heart and all the complexities of my mind with each trip home? Which leads to yet another question: which home?
