Reverse Culture Shock

The adventure is not going away. The trip of my life it’s been coming back.

Gathering all you have been and experienced during all your those years abroad and discover who essentially you are now. What remains and what is painfully gone. But it’s a beautiful trip. Because it tells you so much about yourself.

Losing all and replace all. I’m talking about your life, your day to day, replacing your "olds" with "news", your closest friends with many somebodies and figure it out.

But.

But this time its not something new  -brand new, flashy-new-  where you are so busy swallowing all, that you don’t realise what you are leaving behind, because there is so much there for you. Loads. Plenty.

If you were the famous mouse of "Where is my cheese" book. Let’s say, moving to a new country is finding a new room full of cheese. You are so busy stuffing up with all that Cheddar now, that you don’t realise your beloved German cheese is finished. 

Moving back is finding yourself in a totally empty room, and having to figure out so much stuff till you start finding some crumbs. Eventually you find your cheese.

Coming back is all about learning who you are, who you were, and what is next. 

It’s hard and painfully sad, because you have to say good bye to many things that were part of you and that you loved deeply. Parting with your everyday life.  You are broken-hearted. In that terrible shape of you, you see again your old friends, your old relatives and your old life that don’t recognise you any more. They are as well quite confused and frustrated because, whoever came back, it’s not who left. And they don’t realise that they have lost that person too. And the misunderstanding gets close to chaos.

For me all this process, took quite long. 

For me it’s been hell.

 I was so utterly confused in that empty room and so alone and felt so unloved (I mean, my "new me" was unloved and everyone was desperately craving for the old one) that all I wanted to do was coming back to my beautiful English Cheddar cheese room.

But I feel super proud of myself now because I endured it. And in my case it did not only involved the Reverse Culture shock. It was Mid-life crisis there too.

Only when you have endured it, can you realise about the beauty of it. The beauty of being alone and alone and finding what is left of you. And you came up with a new you that is wiser, stronger and has a clear view. And so, you want to replace your "unshaped-just-landed-back you" with your full-in-shape one, to see if people around you start appreciating your new you (they do!) and stop looking for the old one.

Now, I believe all those years abroad make sense in a broader way when you come back. Because you have to wrap up what that meant for you. What they did to you and how they shaped you.

I want to tell you about this last trip. I want to tell you about another happy chapter in my life but probably the most painful.