They say culture shock has an adjustable timeline. If you're going abroad for several years, the stages take their time. And if you're leaving for just a semester, the honeymoon stage, disintegration stage, reintegration stage and adaptation stage rearrange themselves obligingly to fit your schedule. Somehow your body just knows when it's time to move on to the next stage in order to let you experience the whole gamut of living-abroad emotions.
For the most part, in my international wanderings (and livings), I've just let nature take its course and gone with the flow, and voila! - the stages appear, in correct order, just like clockwork.
But whatever the hell my body is doing with me right now is not in the culture shock book. Believe me, I've looked. I expected a certain amount of relief, and a certain amount of stress, after the new directors arrived. Relief because finally, finally, I'm not flying solo anymore; stress because now it's my task to hand over everything I've learned, all the wisdom I've gained on this rocky road.
But what the hell is happening to me? For the past two days, I can't stop crying. My head and shoulders hurt so bad I keep looking for the vise. Is this catharsis or nuclear meltdown?
So many times I've just wanted to give up and go home. I've literally dreamed about getting into an airplane and not looking back. But I kept staying. I've slogged through all this crap here so I could leave with my head up and my integrity intact. And now the new directors come and I am finally being relieved of this burden that I've come to hate and resent, and I want to do this professionally, but now all I can do is blubber like a goddamn baby.
Why can't it just wait until I've finished this up and closed this chapter of my life and thrown away the key? Why does it have to be right now, in the middle of these three weeks when I have to be confident and engaging and relay to these people the hope and future of this ministry I barely even believe in anymore? Why does it have to be RIGHT NOW, dammit? I've apparently repressed these feelings for this long, why can't they just wait 3 more weeks until I am around people who won't mind patting my back and handing me a kleenex? I just don't think people were made to cry alone.
Oh yeah. 19 days.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
I don't know what's going on anymore
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2 comments:
Go easy on yourself, Jess. I think that it's all just too big right now; you can't help but show it. The days must seem like years right now, but you will be home soon. You won't have to repress anything anymore. Love ya, Amy
Jess--We love you, and your crying is never alone. EAM.
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