I'm supposed to be doing homework, but I'm feeling a deep sense of ennui today.
I'm also having an overseas homesick day. My TEFL teacher in Prague warned us against "bad foreign days" where it's just really hard to be an expat, and those definitely happen, but I think once you spend any significant period of time as part of another culture, you're doomed to bad home-country days thereafter. Maybe it's just me.
This was all triggered by reading that a friend from college who also taught in Korea is going back. Her situation is extremely different from mine, although in some ways not. However, I've been stateside for almost four years, and I still have dreams (literally, like while sleeping) about going back. I still find myself planning how I would go about it and what I would do. Seeing that my friend is returning, indefinitely this time, made me insanely jealous.
The funny thing about it is--and if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you will know--I was pretty miserable a lot of the time I was there. And part of me has to wonder if I'm just always wanting a redo. On the other hand, coming back and "being American" again gives you a hell of a sense of perspective, and it's that sense of perspective that I think allowed me to be as happy as I've been over the past four years. I always say that my experience in Korea was the hardest yet best thing I've ever done. It was hard, it was painful, it was exhausting, it was exhilarating, it was eye-opening, it was adventure. Reflecting on it after all this time seems redundant, but I don't know if I will ever shake the feeling that I need to be on the move. And I don't know if I can ever really let go of something that meant so much to me.
I still feel like an outsider. I hear people I know talking about things like home decor and landscaping, new cars and new houses. I couldn't care less about any of those things. Every time I hear these conversations, I think, "first world problems." Not that I've ever lived in the third world, and not that I want to, but it just seems like experiences are worth so much more than these weird status symbols (and I could write a separate essay on why I think materialism is not only an American problem), and, more than that, all of those things seem like they would build a prison that would just barricade me in and suffocate my freedom.
I don't know what the solution is. Obviously, I'm about to be a master of library science. I've started applying and interviewing for full-fledged librarian jobs. I'm excited about this (I think), but I also feel a deep sense of sadness as I wonder if my dreams of being a perpetual world traveler are dead, or at least out of reach. For the first few months after I came home from Korea, I was planning my escape. I felt incredibly trapped, disillusioned, and on the outside. On days like today, I feel like that again.
But...then there's the life I have now. And one of the hardest things for me is that you can never have it every which way. I'm totally staring at the fig tree in The Bell Jar, and I have been since I was 18. Happiness is a choice, and of course I have to decide to be happy. Even if I went back to Korea or somewhere else, I would have to make that choice. Today, I was sort of beside myself at work and on the drive home, and I wasn't sure how I could make everything that I want fit. But then I walked in my house and I saw my partner, and I couldn't help but smile. And I can't rationally reconcile it just yet, but I feel like it is going to be okay. Somehow I will find a balance. But it feels really good to have someone by your side.
Our plethoras of experience make us who we are. If I didn't have the weird mishmash of life choices that I have, I wouldn't be where I am or who I am, and I wouldn't know what I know (although there is always so much more to know!). And all of those experiences melt and coagulate, and you never know when or how they will serve you. I'm not ruling anything out.
