I am a person who gets
very attached to people and places that I suffer a lot when leaving them and find a big difficulty in adapting to new ones.
I've experienced what's called
culture shock more than once in my life, and I'm prepared for yet another one that's coming very soon.
The first time was when we moved to another city, leaving my friends, with whom I spent eleven years of my life, back. Despite being in the same country, the change was too much for me to bear. At school, I was surrounded by strangers instead of friends. I felt alienated and heart-broken. I used to call my friends and send them letters telling them how miserable I was without them. I didn't want to study anymore, I hated everything and everyone in my life, my school, my classmates, my teachers, everything. My grades were getting worse and worse. And I was getting more aggressive and depressed. Believe it or not, (I myself can barely believe that) It took me
years to get used to my new life.
I visit Jordan once or twice a year, and I do love being there and enjoy it a lot. But it takes me one month only before I start feeling uneasy and homesick and would cry like a baby asking them to "take meeee baaaack hoooome".
The idea of living abroad and leaving Lebanon used to freak me out, and I had a feeling that I was going to leave, sooner or later. And that's what actually happened. When I got married and had to leave I promised myself not to think much about it, to be open-minded and look at the positive side, and do my best to get used to this new life as soon as possible. You know during the first stage, one feels excited, everything about the foreign country and its people seems interesting and fascinating, but later on the suffering and the homesickness begins... the worst phase of all.. when you're overwhelmed with the uncomfortable feeling of not belonging, of being an outsider, which will eventually lead to a feeling of isolation and even a hostility to the new environment. These symptoms, however, are most likely to disappear with the passage of time. I didn't reach the "recovery" and "stability" phase which is the normal outcome of living abroad though because thankfully
my unborn baby decided to put an end to my frustration and bring me back home.
What made me write this post is that I noticed that there are people who, just like me, feel like a fish out of water when they move from a familiar environment and enter a strange one, while others can more easily cope with culture shock, make new friends and move on in life.
I have these two friends, one of them left her husband in Spain after three months of getting married and returned back after she could take it no more. While the other has been living in Holland for years and barely complained of being bored, homesick or depressed. People are not the same after all.
I hate el "ghorbeh".
