I don't know who said it, but shortly after I made the decision to expat, I read an article by someone talking about the strangeness of being an expat. Admittedly, I've only been away for 6 months if you don't count study abroad (and really, you shouldn't), but I'm already starting to feel the effects. Specifically, this guy said that when you expat, you split yourself - you'll never really fit all the way into the place you move, you'll always be foreign and carry with you the experience of having been raised in a different country; and you'll never really fit in all the way in America anymore because you've been changed by living abroad.
It's a weird thing to experience.
Coming back after the last 6 months - and they have been a formative 6 months - I'm not the same as I once was. Somethings, for certain, are more comfortable here in Colorado. My friends and family are here, and there's never the panic of what I'll do with my free time (hang out with Mom, bake all the sweets) or do with my nights (dates might abound in Prague, but the best companions are here). Interactions with strangers are easier, and I've yet to have difficulty communicating anything to anyone yet. Even coming out of the bathroom and almost hitting someone with the door in the bar is less stressful here than it would be in Prague, because I can smile and say sorry without rifling through which languages the person may or may not understand. There's an abundance of food I've been missing (I had cold Chinese food from Coal Mine Dragon for breakfast today. Mmmmmm), and ingredients for cooking I've missed (I'm making gluten-free mushroom mac and cheese tomorrow for dinner!). The beer is sooooooooooooo much better here, and yes, my Czech friends, I will fight you on this. Right now I'm drinking New Belgium's Trippel, which is an amber ale brewed with water from the Rockies and fresh coriander right up the road in Fort Collins, and good luck finding something like that in Prague. Sure, U Fleku is three times as old as this country, but god damn do they need a new recipe. I can drive my car and blast the radio, I can strap on a pair of skis and flounce around in the snow, and I can wear shorts and a parka inside 24 hours of one another. I never termed myself a Colorado girl, but there's a special type of attitude in this place that I identify with, and it's hard to express to someone who didn't grow up here. I guess it's a sneakers-over-heels thing, a jeans and t-shirt at the club thing, a love of ingenuity, fresh air, good beer, sunrises, and good-natured sarcasm. It's more than just that, but Colorado, and especially Denver, will always be home, where I feel safest.
But... I don't belong here. Not right now, at least. And I think, right now, it's because I don't want to feel safe. God, my mother is going to love reading that. But at home, there's an expectation of who I am, and I don't ever have to push outside that. In Prague, no one knows me so well that I can hide inside their predictions for me. Here's an example - if I were to get bad news here, surrounded by the people I love, they'd swoop in and solve the problem for me. And, barring that, there would be an abundance of shoulders to cry on, couches to sleep on, and ways to wallow in my misery. In Prague, I can spend an hour or so on Skype with those people, but the next day, no one is making me coffee, no one is buying me a drink, no one is surprising me with flowers. I really am learning to stand on my own two feet. And also, the people around me know me well enough that they'd expect me to react badly before I even did so. In Prague, no one is paying enough attention, and I get to choose my own reaction. I have, so far, been choosing to sulk for a day or two instead of a week or two, and then move on. I'm much happier in my own skin in Prague. A couple more examples, if you're curious - in high school, one of my best friends told me I'd look like a dyke if I got an eyebrow piercing - I've had two. In college I was told not to try boxing because I couldn't handle getting punched - I got kicked in the head a week ago at MMA, my immediate reaction was to tell her to kick harder. Also in college, my mom and my boyfriend at the time both told me I'd be a terrible teacher and I'd hate it because I lack patience - on Friday, my most difficult student told me I'm the most effective teacher he's had in years. I love my friends and my family, I really do. But they box me in sometimes, and in Prague I don't have to deal with that.
So being Prague Cydney in the space where they expect Denver Cydney is weird. It's kinda like wearing a pair of pants that don't fit anymore because you lost weight. Not bad, because you're proud of the changes you've made, but kinda awkward.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Hero fantasy
I dated a guy who was big into fantasies - calm down, it's not that kind of post - and I mean all types. Sexual fantasies, sure, but that (as stated above) is not the topic of this post. And also fantasy the genre, but given that I have a Jedi costume and The Lord of the Rings was a major part of my adolescence (I cried during the opening of The Hobbit), I tend to attract those kind of people. No, I specifically mean fantasies like "Caregiver fantasy" (which can easily segue into Wounded Soldier Fantasy, and then we're back into "not talking about this" territory) or "Badass with a heart of gold fantasy." Phrased better, because the way he put it was stupid, he meant tropes we see in movies played out in our own realities. It's part of the hegemonic process that we emulate what we see on the television, then that in turn gets fed back into the media machine in an endless feedback loop of stupid, simplified social performances.
And that right there just REEKS of Liberal Arts degree, so lemme give it to you plain - we see characterizations on TV or in the movies or in books, and those tell us how we ought to behave. The nebulous forces creating the TV, the movies, the books see us behaving a certain way, and recreate those (often exaggerated) on the screen or the page. Then we see those ways we ought to behave and so on and so forth. It's how we get standardized ideas of how men and women behave, how kids behave, how adults behave, etc. So when this guy pointed out people in "fantasies" and thought he was being so very clever, he was mostly just pointing out the effects of hegemony with some made-up terminology of his own.
The reason I bring this up is because he found it extremely strange I "don't have the Hero fantasy? Like, never?" Nope, never. "I don't believe you."
Well, that's his (and your) prerogative, and in the interest of being totally straight with you, "never" isn't totally accurate. When I started dating boys, I had somehow (read: from the TV, books, and movies I consumed) gotten into my daft, hormone riddled brain that the solution to every problem I had was with a man. There were, of course, a couple problems with that. First, I was 15 and anyone I dated was going to fall into that same demographic, which meant MAN was not on the menu, only BOY, and not even the prime cut. Second, the only problem I had was being 15, and ain't no solution to that but time. Of course, no 15 year old is aware that really her only problem is being 15, so I invented problems that all boiled down to "I'm emotionally fragile and cannot possibly make myself happy because I'm tragic. LOVE ME, DAMN IT." This is dumb, by the way. And (shockingly) did not solve my problems, real or perceived, and I was miserable.
So I wanted an emotional hero, went looking, and kept coming back with "404 hero could not be found. Please try another address." I think I've gotten much better at not making my happiness dependent on another human being, but I can't judge really well. I've also become a caregiver, which makes me much, much happier. To paraphrase Tim Minchin, happiness is like an orgasm, concentrating on your own makes it go away, but concentrating on someone else's can be incredibly pleasant.
My mom is a huge caregiver - she's been the acting matriarch of both sides of my family for a very long time, she's be hugely supportive of me my whole life, and even my friends go to her before they go to their own parents. She is, in a word, a saint. And when I was 15, I was an idiot (as established) and did not want to be my mother. Apparently, this meant I did not want to be nice. I also have a cousin who bends herself into pretzels to please everyone, which inevitably pleases no one, least of all herself. But as I've gotten older, and needed quite a bit of help being happy, I learned to appreciate, and then admire the caregivers in my life, the people willing to prop me up when I needed it. And often when I needed it and didn't ask for it. Then, because we emulate what we admire, I tried being there for the people around me, too. It started small - buying drinks for broke friends, then got a little bigger to taking friends out when they got dumped because I didn't know what to say, then the realization I didn't need to say anything and should just listen, to now. I won't go into details... but I've become a caregiver, I think, and it also makes me infinitely happier than concentrating on my own misery.
So, exboyfriend, I do have the Hero Fantasy, just not the way you wanted. I get to be my own hero.
And that right there just REEKS of Liberal Arts degree, so lemme give it to you plain - we see characterizations on TV or in the movies or in books, and those tell us how we ought to behave. The nebulous forces creating the TV, the movies, the books see us behaving a certain way, and recreate those (often exaggerated) on the screen or the page. Then we see those ways we ought to behave and so on and so forth. It's how we get standardized ideas of how men and women behave, how kids behave, how adults behave, etc. So when this guy pointed out people in "fantasies" and thought he was being so very clever, he was mostly just pointing out the effects of hegemony with some made-up terminology of his own.
The reason I bring this up is because he found it extremely strange I "don't have the Hero fantasy? Like, never?" Nope, never. "I don't believe you."
Well, that's his (and your) prerogative, and in the interest of being totally straight with you, "never" isn't totally accurate. When I started dating boys, I had somehow (read: from the TV, books, and movies I consumed) gotten into my daft, hormone riddled brain that the solution to every problem I had was with a man. There were, of course, a couple problems with that. First, I was 15 and anyone I dated was going to fall into that same demographic, which meant MAN was not on the menu, only BOY, and not even the prime cut. Second, the only problem I had was being 15, and ain't no solution to that but time. Of course, no 15 year old is aware that really her only problem is being 15, so I invented problems that all boiled down to "I'm emotionally fragile and cannot possibly make myself happy because I'm tragic. LOVE ME, DAMN IT." This is dumb, by the way. And (shockingly) did not solve my problems, real or perceived, and I was miserable.
So I wanted an emotional hero, went looking, and kept coming back with "404 hero could not be found. Please try another address." I think I've gotten much better at not making my happiness dependent on another human being, but I can't judge really well. I've also become a caregiver, which makes me much, much happier. To paraphrase Tim Minchin, happiness is like an orgasm, concentrating on your own makes it go away, but concentrating on someone else's can be incredibly pleasant.
My mom is a huge caregiver - she's been the acting matriarch of both sides of my family for a very long time, she's be hugely supportive of me my whole life, and even my friends go to her before they go to their own parents. She is, in a word, a saint. And when I was 15, I was an idiot (as established) and did not want to be my mother. Apparently, this meant I did not want to be nice. I also have a cousin who bends herself into pretzels to please everyone, which inevitably pleases no one, least of all herself. But as I've gotten older, and needed quite a bit of help being happy, I learned to appreciate, and then admire the caregivers in my life, the people willing to prop me up when I needed it. And often when I needed it and didn't ask for it. Then, because we emulate what we admire, I tried being there for the people around me, too. It started small - buying drinks for broke friends, then got a little bigger to taking friends out when they got dumped because I didn't know what to say, then the realization I didn't need to say anything and should just listen, to now. I won't go into details... but I've become a caregiver, I think, and it also makes me infinitely happier than concentrating on my own misery.
So, exboyfriend, I do have the Hero Fantasy, just not the way you wanted. I get to be my own hero.
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