This summer will be the first time in a year and a half that I am at home. When you are preparing to leave, you hear a lot about returning as well and this idea of reverse culture shock. The idea of reverse culture shock is best explained in a simple illustration. In your home culture, you are a square. Your host culture is full of people who are circles. As you live in that culture, you slowly become a hexagon, as you become slightly rounder. Which is great when you are living in that culture, but when you return to your home culture, you start to realize you don't quite fit. It's a kind of subtle shifting. Depending on how long you are gone for, at first you may not notice. For me it was more of a slow realization that where I was standing was not where I was standing before. The foundations under me had shifted slightly.
I have had quite a few people ask me about it since I have come home and it is difficult to explain fully. I read something someone else wrote about it and she said it was as though awkward had suddenly snuck into all the conversations and interactions that once felt normal and natural. The best way I can describe it is through a series of examples.
The second day I was home, my mom needed some groceries last minute from the store and my dad didn't get the message on the way home from work, so my brother and I went out to the grocery store. This is a normal thing for us to do. I let him drive since it has been 18 months since I last drove and I wasn't quite sure of my ability to pick it back up right away. As he went to get the one item we needed for dinner, I figured I could pick up a few things that I didn't bring back with me but needed, like toiletries. I never really grew comfortable with the supermarkets in Eastern Africa. I find that everything is organized in a confusing manner and nothing is where I would expect it to be. So I was kind of looking forward to shopping back in the States where everything would be easy to find. However, instead of a small section of one aisle, I found three different aisles full of items similar to what I needed. I wandered for a while before I just stopped in one aisle and confusedly stared at the shelves. When my brother finished his shopping he found me in that section, still searching. I asked him and he was able to find what I needed right away and I was very grateful to leave and be done with the store. Since then, I find anytime I enter a store a very disorienting sense of not belonging here.
A week later we traveled to my cousin's graduation in Texas. I was so excited for some warm weather since I had been freezing since I returned. I excitedly pack shorts and dresses and tank tops to wear since everyone was going on about how warm Texas was supposed to be. We got to my uncle's house and everyone was getting ready to go. Donning my knee length dress and heels I was chatting with my cousins as we all bumbled about, bantering and putting on makeup. When we got to the high school football field where the graduation was going to happen, I realized a few things. One I felt very naked. Two I wished I had brought something to put my hair up with. And three, night in Texas is still pretty cold. Even though, my dress was a perfectly appropriate length and my hair was tied back in two braids, compared to how I left the house for the last 18 months, it felt incredibly strange. I was really looking forward to wearing my hair down, especially since it has grown out longer than what it has been since high school, and yet now that I can wear it down, I still instinctively pull it up. I have even left the house with my hair down but when I saw how crowded it was where we were going, I pulled it back up. It has become an awkward twitch to attempt to detract attention from myself.
Since coming home, I have gone for many walks. That is something I have really missed and am so grateful that it is both cool enough and socially acceptable to go for walks here. But I have found that whenever I pass someone walking, I instinctively look down and away. When walking around in Eastern Africa, looking down is a bit of a necessity as a person attempts to avoid stepping in puddles or rolling one's ankles on loose stones. It is also something as a woman I have gotten in the habit of doing. Often people will stare at myself and my teammates because we obviously don't belong and they are trying to figure out who we are and what we are doing. But it is also impolite for a woman to stare at a man. Too often I have been just looking around and make direct eye contact with some guy who is staring. And while it is not my fault, I don't want to cause any problems so I immediately look down. Whenever possible I just keep my eyes either fixed on the distant horizon or about knee level to avoid any issues.
These are just a few examples and don't include all the awkward conversations where I am trying to figure out what I can ask the person, because while they have been reading my updates and know what I have been doing, I haven't talked to them in a year and half. Do I still ask about the job which they haven't mentioned at all? Are they still dating that person? Wait, how old is their child now? Or all the times people are having a whole conversation around me about a current event that didn't make it into my global news headlines or a family life event that wasn't quite important enough for people to tell me about. Or the even less notable differences like all the food I have been missing doesn't actually taste as good as I remember it or the new decorations in the house or at the church.
Somehow it is worse the more familiar something is. It is almost like someone got their nostalgic wish to go back in time. It is all there but it's not. Because it has changed. People have changed. You have changed. You know this but it still takes a minute to adjust to.
Did you know your eyes actually see everything upside down and your brain then flops the image? There are glasses you can wear that will reverse your eyes' ability to see things upside down. While it is very disorienting at first, your brain can actually adapt to seeing the world the correct way around by not flipping the image. I think reverse culture shock is like that. When living for a while in a place where almost everything seems upside down, you learn how to navigate. You learn the new culture and language and polite way to do things. But when you come back home, it takes a while to slip back into the old way of doing things. New memories have become ingrained. You have new coping mechanisms and new solutions. Now you have to remember how to re-flip everything around and re-remember the old rhythms.