Not looking for sympathy or empathy, just talking
I miss my friends.
Usually when I'm homesick it's from a small cultural difference, missing a particular food. I'll decide that I don't like Japan for some reason, and blow it out of proportion until I can see it objectively and deal with it rationally again.
That's easy with food, clothes, books, what-have-you. But one of the hardest realizations of living abroad has been, obvious as it may seem, knowing that life continues when you are gone. Of course it does, right?
I've talked about it to a few other ALTs, and we each have methods of mentally dealing with seperation from our home-life, be it imagined "worlds," "lives," "levels," or whatever. We mentally segregate ourselves from what we know our base culture is doing, because it has no connection to us now, or is so limited as to seem... unreal. I wonder if we do it to avoid the pain. When I recall all that I left, and close the distance between home and Japan whether by calling home or talking extensively on the internet, I feel a physical loss. I know that I am detached from that life.
I am changing without my friends and family who have known me for the majority of my life witnissing it. I know I have changed, and I know those who I care about back home are not a part of it. But the part that is harder to comprehend is that they are changing too. How will it feel to return "home" to find you no longer know your high school or uni friends? Your siblings and cousins grown? Parents with even more grey?
Maybe it's not homesickness I'm speaking of, but at least partially reverse culture shock.
Usually when I'm homesick it's from a small cultural difference, missing a particular food. I'll decide that I don't like Japan for some reason, and blow it out of proportion until I can see it objectively and deal with it rationally again.
That's easy with food, clothes, books, what-have-you. But one of the hardest realizations of living abroad has been, obvious as it may seem, knowing that life continues when you are gone. Of course it does, right?
I've talked about it to a few other ALTs, and we each have methods of mentally dealing with seperation from our home-life, be it imagined "worlds," "lives," "levels," or whatever. We mentally segregate ourselves from what we know our base culture is doing, because it has no connection to us now, or is so limited as to seem... unreal. I wonder if we do it to avoid the pain. When I recall all that I left, and close the distance between home and Japan whether by calling home or talking extensively on the internet, I feel a physical loss. I know that I am detached from that life.
I am changing without my friends and family who have known me for the majority of my life witnissing it. I know I have changed, and I know those who I care about back home are not a part of it. But the part that is harder to comprehend is that they are changing too. How will it feel to return "home" to find you no longer know your high school or uni friends? Your siblings and cousins grown? Parents with even more grey?
Maybe it's not homesickness I'm speaking of, but at least partially reverse culture shock.