Friday Day

Today was a good day. That is, after I left the office early. It was also one of those days that perfectly represents my indecision to return to Utah: work was boring and depressing. It left me grumpy and in a pissy mood afterwards, and I get annoyed with the kindest of acts by my friends. I hate that feeling. All the while, when I'm in that mood, I recognize it. I recognize I'm being grumpy, and yet can't stop it. So I just feel it out and try to be present to it. Beating myself up about it never makes me feel any better.

On the other hand, after work, I love India. I love riding on the bus. For some reason ascending into that sweaty mosh pit, being squished with Indian women with big smiles, always gives me joy. I love it. I took the bus to the old town, bought some gifts, and sat on the rocks by the seaside. Evenings in Pondicherry are wonderful.

I came home. Lalida and Perumal were back! I talked with them, and finally, at long last, was able to have a conversation with Lakshmi translated. Lakshmi was so excited about it and Lalida seemed really surprised at our intimate relationship. Ha, and at how often Lakshmi and I would hug each other and rub each others' backs.

Then I played badminton with Krishna, the neighbor kid. He's pretty cool and reminds me of my nephew Wesley a lot.

Again: work horrible, me wanting to gouge my eyes out. After work: great, me picking flowers and singing like a Disney princess.

Also, did I tell you that I'm like Sita's third child? She puts flowers in my hair everyday. She teaches me Tamil words. And she also scolds me when I do something wrong. When especially hot I always find myself raising the legs of my pants - just a little teensy bit! She'll slap my hand. "No!!" She shakes her head. I'll make a frowny face. She'll shake her head again. Another time I was playing with the bangles she gave me. Again, slap on the hand, "No! Glass!" The bangles are glass - stop playing with them or they'll break! Another time. I eat the entire berry she gave me (including the middle). My face gives away how horrible it tastes. Another head shake from her, "No!!" Don't eat the core, crazy!

I saw her at the bus stop today. I went up to her and gave her a hug. She then proceeded to give me loud kisses on my cheeks. Ha, this caused everyone around to look at us with curiosity. Why is that Indian kissing the white girl?! And then Sita helped me to cross the street.

I'm really going to miss everyone. I'm tired of missing people no matter where I live. Why can't we all just be together?

Decision-making

Ugh. Another decision. Always decisions.

I have been bored out of my mind as of late. Basically, my organization doesn't really have anything for me to do. I occasionally write a report, or do a project. And I feel like dying when I do reports.

After my "volunteering" time, there is only about an hour until night-time, and so I run out and try to do something in town before rushing home so as to not be out alone at night. I don't ever feel unsafe at night, but people still tell me not to be about. Then I come to where I live and talk to my neighbor, to Lakshmi, and now to new French volunteer Celine who shares my room with me.

This all worries me. I have not felt "depressed" for many months now, but I know that it will come if I have nothing to do for so long. I think too much about things when I don't have anything to do. It is detrimental for me.

This is so frustrating to me as I very dearly love India, at least the part of it I have experienced. I love my friends here. I love coming into the office to get a hug and kiss from Sita, and going home to make some joke to Lakshmi. I love going to the Hindu temple, and riding the bus, and going to my store and to my chemist. I love going up to my terrace, and talking to my neighbor, which was at first a trial for me as I wanted alone-time.

But again, this is all in contrast to my volunteering duty. I spoke to my friend and office supervisor, Nandhini. She said they would get some kids together to start an English class I can teach. I jumped in excitement at the thought! I would have something to do!! YES!! …However, kids are now in school. Class would only be from 6 - 7 in the evening - the only time I normally have to explore town.

For the past week, I have had many thoughts of leaving India early, not because I am stressed here or dislike it at all, but because I am bored. I have quickly brushed these thoughts aside, knowing that probably everyone coming to India for a few months has that thought. At some point in our stay here, we foreigners hit a wall where we get bored or frustrated. This is just my wall - that Stage 2 of Culture shock.

I have prayed a lot, asking Father to help me be present to these feelings, and to feel them out. But things at work have only gotten worse and more boring for me. And usually thoughts of going home fade after a day or two, but now they are more recurring. I prayed to God that if He thought it best for me to leave earlier, to let me know. And now these thoughts are more frequent. Now, staying til September seems to be the incorrect thing to do.

Hm. I don't know. I don't want to leave my friends here, dammit!! I want to keep learning Tamil!! To keep discovering layers of culture by hanging out with my host family after work everyday. To wake up every day and to draw kolam, designs made with powder, on the porch every morning. I want to keep watching horribly made Tamil soap operas with Lakshmi, and play with Perumal's niece and nephew. I don't want to go back to America, to Utah, with its big highways, its disconnection from the land, and other factors which I cannot quite place my finger on. I don't want to go back and to get used to thinking that life in America is how the world is. To be just another person that "lived in India for a couple months" and assimilates back into the person they were before. I hate coming home and being unable to fully describe my experience to others. To go back and to let my time here become another memory. To return and not be understood by the majority of people I meet.

Every time I come home from a trip, I think of Frodo in Lord of the Rings, the story that I have looked to every time. He returns to his home to find that he cannot go back to the Shire as he knew it, that he is a different person, and he cannot fully live in peace after gone through such a long and hard journey. "Sometimes there are wounds that never heal."

Sometimes I think the hardest part of living internationally is coming home. You are a different person. You try to adapt back into society while also not losing what you have learned in your time away.

But then comes the thought, "Sarah, what's best for you, and your state of being?" I know it isn't making myself endure doing nothing all day everyday at the office. Perumal and Lalida would be disappointed at me going away early. I feel like I would be disappointed in myself a bit. And then I'd feel like I would have to calmly explain to most people, "Look, I didn't come back early because I couldn't handle it, but because I would die a slow and painful emotional death if I continued to sit at work reading newspapers and playing solitaire all day." (I actually think they would be glad I returned for my mental health, but the insecure part of me disagrees).

At the same time, the thought of coming home and being satisfied with myself and knowing it was the right thing for me to do, despite of others' thoughts, sounds refreshing. I totally know the people I trust, (Ann, Mom, Kenzie, you're included in this) would agree with that.

Ugh. Ugh. UGH. DAMMIT!! PUTAIN!!! (Mom, don't look up the meaning of putain…but, it's a French bad word that I learned, I'll just say that.)

I'm watching Sita now, my favorite person here. I love her a lot. I don't want to leave her.

I have often spoke to my friends who have also spent time living abroad (Maggie, Ann, Heather, Natalie, Jay, the list goes on) about why we love learning about other cultures so much, and yet most of us seem to be outsiders to our own society. Maybe that's why we love other cultures. We immerse ourselves in them and make connections. We feel more connected with them than in our native culture. Yet if we do feel like an outsider wherever we visit, it is not because of our social or emotional differences or insecurities, but because of our nationality or skin color. It is much more affirming than feeling like an outsider in our own communities.

In the end, maybe going home, and not staying here to endure boredom, is what the Lord wants me to experience and to struggle with.

Processing Homesickness

It's Sunday. And since there is not an LDS/Mormon sacrament service in town, I have decided to make Sundays holy in other ways. (Is it bad that later today I'm going to have a "remembrance moment" and pray over bread and water?) I originally planned on spending Sundays exploring other temples and churches, seeking to know God as different religions do. However, I learned that most activity in the temples and churches take place in the evening. This is tricky since I was directed by friends not to stay out too late past sunset. At any rate, I'll visit the Ganesh Hindu temple later today when the sun is not so fiery. In the meantime, I've been reading The Hindu -India's national newspaper-, talking with my host family, reading scriptures, pondering, and meditating.

In my attempts to practice mindfulness, my attention constantly comes back to my recurring emotional pattern of each day. I wake up rested, adventurous, and fascinated with this new culture and world which I have entered. I go out and explore. I greet women in the stores who look at me curiously with a smile, a "vanakkam," and a head bob (I don't acknowledge any of the mens' stares). I ask a barrage of questions and take notes in my jottings journal. I write follow-up questions that I want to inquire about later. Then, around 4 o'clock or so, I begin to feel the emotional drain, the exhaustion of having taken in so many news things. The toll of being in a completely new environment away from everything with which I have grown up. By 9 o'clock at night I'm on the verge of tears wondering what the hell I'm doing here, feeling the familiar tightness of chest and throat, and texting my mom to make sure she knows I love her and miss her. All the while, I feel ashamed for feeling homesick.

Homesickness. My thoughts and shame keep coming back to damn homesickness. More than that, my thoughts keep coming back to the shame I'd feel if others I care about, and particularly whose opinions of me I care about, would *gasp* discover my homesickness!! What would they think?! I'm not as adventurous of a person as they thought! Who is this girl, psh, feeling homesick?!

My thoughts keep going back to that. I keep remembering how I felt embarrassed of telling some people in my life that I wanted to go to India; I worried they did not think me to be "strong enough" to go. I remember my first inklings of a desire to come; I felt sheepish about it. "Oh no," I'd say. "I'm not good enough to go there." And now, in the calm evenings after dinner when I grow sentimental of home, of family and friends in America, I fear that I was right: I'm not fit to be here.

Three years ago I started therapy at my school's Counseling Center. I went in to fix myself. To have this stereotypical, media-simulated transformation where I would reemerge a new and "fixed" person. Voila! I felt that I had some psychological disorder in loving people too much, in being "too attached" , or "unhealthy". Due to various events, I felt that being so loving of people was wrong. I became entrenched in depression, for the above and other heartachy reasons. But after three years of this mindfulness therapy group, I realized nothing was wrong with me at all. Rather, this love and connection with people and friends is something beautiful.

Maybe my evening homesickness is like that too. Perhaps it is beautiful to have courage to go somewhere new, knowing it will be uncomfortable, while simultaneously longing for the people I've left behind. Perhaps it is beautiful to continue to think about the various people I love, who are miles and miles away.

One evening a long time ago, I had dinner at Mazza's in Salt Lake with a friend of mine who had been to India. I told her about my desire to one day go. Then I asked, "What if I have major culture shock? What if I get all mopey and crazy and homesick?" Robyn looked at me and said, "Then you'll be like everyone else who moves to India and experiences the same thing." Wise words.

Fast Forward

The time has come for me to go. People ask if I am afraid or nervous to go to India. I've heard many different ideas of what I should be afraid of, but I don't feel afraid. Although, I have a couple of things I'm trying to prepare for: the switch from a regimented meal plan to eating lots of rice, a paranoia of being pickpocketed, a worry that my relationship with individuals at the organization will be centered around transactions of money rather than friendship, and culture shock.

1) I have progressed a lot this past year in eating a healthy, balanced diet. I have also tried to consume a lot less carbs. Now when I eat a lot of them, I feel like dying. In addition, I have eaten A LOT of Indian food this week. I still love it, but boy, I feel so heavy and immobile afterwards.

2) In Italy I developed a crazy paranoia of being pickpocketed. Before leaving to go anywhere, whether it was leaving the place where I lived or exiting the bus, I always had to literally check my purse and pockets three times to make sure everything was accounted for. And I could have gone on checking; I had to will myself to believe everything was accounted for and to walk away.

3) Enough said.

4) Culture Shock


I've experienced it before, and everyone has. Yes, you too. If a person has experienced changing circumstances in life, whether it's moving from Arizona to Utah or breaking up with a longtime partner, one has experienced culture shock. It's the process your body and emotions go through to adapt to changing environments. But the thing is, if a person is experiencing culture shock when living in a different country, it means that he/she is doing something right. They're growing! They're adapting. And in order to do that, there has to be the sense of loss, or that feeling of being engulfed in the winds of change, in the waves of the unknown.

Each person has different symptoms of culture shock. One of mine is always homesickness and not wanting to leave my sense of place behind. It gets me every time. Leaving my abode in Salt Lake to live with my mom for a few days was difficult. I drove away thinking of all the moments I have lived through in Salt Lake. The bus routes I took. My favorite houses in my neighborhood. The corner of 9th and 9th. The beauty of Temple Square. My friends' house on Lake Street. Utah in the summer time. As you can tell, I very much believe in the power of place.

It is so interesting how moving, or change in general, causes one to reflect and grasp to be back in "how it was". I even started to miss the hard times I've experienced in Salt Lake. Walking up my hill, listening to Lost Stars by Adam Levine, and watching Pioneer Day fireworks below while holding back tears of emotional pain I was enduring at the time. Or strolling home from screenwriting class in the middle of the night along 500 South; the way I walked under the street lamps that glowed in the dark.

At times I am ashamed of my homesickness. And one would think that a person who tends to get homesick would not be so interested in traveling to and living in foreign places. But, it makes sense to me. I appreciate emotions. I try to experience every moment to its fullest, even moments of missing people or things. And I feel that I appreciate the significance of life changes.

I know that hard times and various challenges are ahead, in India and wherever I will be. But I don't feel afraid. I am thankful for that. After all, having fear is not a comfortable feeling. I'm excited for the opportunities. Some believe that before we were born, all of us shouted for joy at the thought of coming to earth and experiencing life. There have been times when I have wondered why anyone would do that with all the suffering and heartbreak that life brings. Now, as I look forward to something, maybe I understand. At least a bit.