Doing Re-entry

Re-entry

noun

1.The action or process of re-entering

- your passport country, culminating in:

The feeling of being a foreigner in your own country

Moving to a new country is hard:

You have to learn the language,

Get used to a new culture,

And figure out how to eat the food,
All the while, trying not to offend anyone by what you say, do or wear.

This can go on for years and years before you finally begin to feel at home.

Then you start to relax:

You can understand conversations without flipping through your dictionary,

You develop friendships that go deeper than surface conversations,

You begin to understand looks and gestures and adopt them as your own.

And then you move back to your own country.

It might seem like a rather simple thing to do, moving back to your own country.

After all that’s probably where you grew up:

Maybe your family is there,

And the best friend you’ve known since kindergarten.

You already know the language,

Love the food

And can’t wait to relax in a culture where you know all the rules.

But then you get back to your country and you find that it’s different.

At some point, while you were away, everything changed,

Including you.

Now, you walk into a room full of people you should feel comfortable around and all you want to do is disappear.

You keep listening to people’s conversations and wondering why you don’t understand what the heck they are talking about.

The food you loved so much suddenly isn’t so special anymore.

You feel like all the rules you knew so well and felt so comfortable with have changed And you don’t know how to react or what is expected of you.

Friendships that were so strong and intimate, now feel stilted.

There’s this huge chasm that’s opened up with no bridge.

I’m doing re-entry and it is hard.

It’s one of the most painful things in the world to live among people whom I feel so disconnected from.

We moved back to Australia two years ago. That’s quite a long time, not really so long in the re-entry time scale. We were away from Australia for about six years, so it might be another year before we start to feel at home again.

My normal has changed and I am way outside of my comfort zone. Maybe one day this different will be my new normal.

Maybe one day.