Çok ülkedeler yaşamak çok zor. Hangi hastane iyidir? Hangi dış hekimi sakin olacak? Dili konuşamıyorum ve anlayamıyorum.
I had carefully written down what I wanted to say in class for that day's homework assignment on "What makes you stressed?" I sat nervously waiting, at the desk in the far left back corner of the classroom. The teacher asked the first student, who answered about life in Istanbul, and each classmate after that riffed off that answer and talked about the difficulties of living in Turkey.
Then it was my turn.
I was last. I hated being last. I hated having to sit through each classmate's response, not knowing whether I would be called on next, understanding everything they were saying but not being able to bring cohesive words to my mouth when it was my turn to talk.
The teacher looked at me expectantly. All the words I had written down blurred together, my mind went blank, and I felt unbidden tears well up behind my weary eyes. I looked down at my paper, tried to make sense of what I had so painstakingly translated, and dug the fingernail of my left index finger into the soft part of my left thumb. It was a trick I'd learned long ago to stop the tears from coming, at least for a while, as my mind refocused on the physical sensation and forgot about the emotional pain. Temporarily.
A sentence came into focus and I spoke, clumsily maneuvering through the strange pronounciation. I skipped the first part and went straight to, "What is a good hospital? Who is a calm dentist? Immigration office is very difficult. I cannot speak or understand the language."
My voice trembled. I stopped speaking and shrugged my shoulders. I knew if I continued, the fingernail trick would no longer work and the tears would rapidly appear. Even though my classmates mostly didn't notice me, sitting in my corner, the teacher was looking intently right at me, and she would know. I heard a note of compassion in her voice as she agreed that life in a new country was hard when you didn't know the language. Then she gave a few grammatical corrections and I bent my head over my workbook, writing in the corrections and swallowing hard, hoping the desperate need to cry would go away.
I told myself I could cry later.
Class flew by that morning as we learned new grammar and, by the time I was heading down the side street, headphones in, and hiking-boot-clad feet pointed towards home, I was surprised to notice I didn't feel so sad anymore. I didn't cry then and I didn't cry when I let myself in to the privacy of our cozy apartment.
It took several days for the emotion to return. This time it came as anger and withdrawal.
It was 10:30 at night and my husband was hungry. I busied myself in the kitchen cooking rice and fried potatoes. He asked me to add a handful of small frozen grape-sized fruit to the potatoes when they were just about done. As he ate, he asked if I wanted to try them. I said no. Why not? Just one, he pleaded. I refused.
I'm tired of being told to eat this and eat that. I don't want to eat it and if I do, I will let you know, I retorted. Hurt, he replied, It's something new and I thought you would like to try it. Busily washing up and tidying the kitchen, I said, Sometimes I reach my limit for new things for the week, or the month. Or even the year.
As the words came without thought, I stopped in my emotional tracks and realized where the frustrated words came from. I had indeed reached my limit and yet, I had neither recognized it, affirmed it, validated it, or taken time to process it. It was something I had been viscerally experiencing for several weeks by then, but had not been able to put words to it. It came fleetingly, when I wistfully looked at a picture of the new house my aunt and uncle had purchased in the north of the Netherlands. I could only dream of owning a house. Most days I worried about retirement and whether I would end up living in a car or under a bridge one day. It came forcefully, when my body could cope no longer with the short nights, public transportation, cold apartment, and social expectations, and I ended up sick in bed on Christmas Day with a nasty cold. The cough from that cold lasted two full weeks as it settled into my already-struggling lungs. It came quietly, when I stopped going out and exploring the city I had been so excited to make my home a year ago and instead lost myself in mindless games on my phone or Netflix series. It came surprisingly, when I wondered if it wouldn't be so bad after all to return to the US and look for a job. At least I would be able to navigate the medical system there and I could understand the language.
How long does culture shock last? I wondered. A quick search online proved unfruitful. There were stages, generally accepted as the honeymoon, frustration, adjustment, and acceptance stages. Some websites declared it could take a few weeks to a few months to move through the stages, but I had already passed the few months. And I was stuck in the frustration stage.
Maybe for the TCA (third culture adult), culture shock doesn't follow a nicely charted graph. Maybe it is a series of ups and downs, with mostly downs if it is one in a long line of countries required to be adapted to. Maybe a TCA doesn't always have to be happy to move. Happy to learn a new language. Happy to figure out where to find a gentle dentist.
The websites have a plethora of recommendations of how to get past the hump of culture shock as if it is something that must be overcome and put in the past, along with any memories of a good life before the challenges I am facing now. The TCA is advised to socialize with the locals—just about impossible in a huge city where people are impatiently hurrying from responsibility to cultural expectation and have neither time nor patience to try to decipher my halting broken sentences. They shouldn't indulge in thoughts of home and constantly compare it to the new place they now live in—but when I'm confronted by a horde of grannies with their carts, intent on pushing their way past me to snag the freshest cucumbers at the Friday market, I can't help but think of the spacious Costco aisles lined with organic produce and polite shoppers. One website brightly announces that moving to another country to live is "one of the most exciting life experiences you can undertake." They fail to add that it can also be one of the most difficult experiences in your life.
For the TCA, culture shock is more complex than the adjustments a monocultural person experiences when they move to another country for a period of time. The monocultural person comes with their identity anchors firmly placed as they hover over the new country temporarily, absorbing some of the language and culture and lifestyle, but never fully committing to their new home. After all, they will soon return to the familiar and all this will fade into the Google Photos album on their phone that they will pull up to brag to friends about their semester or couple of years abroad.
The TCA, on the other hand, enters the new country with a Pandora's box of emotions. While they are letting go of the memories from their previous country, simultaneously they must acclimate to the new country to the extent that they are indistinguishable from a local. They must learn the language without an accent, love the foods with their unique tastes and textures, dress in the garb and quickly learn the nuances of how to address elders, cross your legs, blow your nose, or any other such quirk of the culture. On top of all these adjustments is the ever-present knowing that they do not have a home anchor. They have been shaped by all the countries they have lived in but cannot lay claim to a single one that they can call their own. This state of liminality is not simply a rite of passage—it is their identity. They exist in confusion because they never really know who they are.
Perhaps another recommendation is not what is needed for this TCA. Perhaps what would help heal the soft keening of a soul lost in the swirl of countries is simply an understanding soul to come alongside and sit with them. Maybe cry a little together. Say, It's okay to feel this way. That we can find a dentist another day. And share a Snickers bar together.
