Book Club Confessions

I went to my first book club gathering in Antananarivo last night. There were 9 ladies including myself, and we discussed our book, Every Day by David Levithan, over coconut chicken, rice, and marinated cucumbers (with a few bottles of reds and whites, of course). It was a treat to meet 4 new faces and to hear and share with all of them.

While the book is a young adult novel that depicts the journey of A, a 16-year old “being” that wakes up every morning inhabiting a different body and a different life, the conversation evolved to our experience as wives, moms, foreign service people, and expats living our lives overseas. The parallels of the story and our lives may be thin, but we were able to extrapolate themes that are pertinent to a life that is still unfamiliar to me, but one that I am loving more and more every day.

During the chat, we discussed visiting home (how often, neutral ground, length of stay, juggling visiting family and friends), challenges/perks of raising kids abroad (I learned the acronym TCK: Third Culture Kids), creating norms/consistency in your family in a world where your geographic location changes every few years, the challenge of acculturating back to the U.S., etc. As an expat-newbie (I have almost 3 months under my belt), this conversation was incredibly eye-opening. Many of these topics were unknown territory for me, and I walked away feeling grateful for the insight.

The biggest takeaway was the understanding and clarity I gained on something that I have been toiling with. The “issue” has morphed from one shape to another over the past three months, but the result is the same: I feel disconnected from my people back home. This may seem like an obvious statement at first. I went from living in the Queen of all cities to living in the 10th-ish poorest country in the world, Owen and I are making new friends in a new community that knows not one person from back home, we are eating new food, speaking new languages, traveling to new places, observing different ways of life, and our people back home are not a part of any of it. Just as much, I’m missing all that is going on within the lives of my beloved back home. D-I-S-C-O-N-N-E-C-T-E-D. And sure, I keep in touch through text, email, social media, etc., but of course, it’s not the same as snuggling into the couch with a glass of wine and your ride or die.

What’s more, I have found myself exacerbating the disconnection. I have a couple of friends that have tried mercilessly to get me on the phone. I always have a reasonable, honest excuse as to why I can’t chat when they try, however, I also experience intense anxiety about the prospect of talking and don’t do much to make the phone call happen after their attempt.

When thinking about communicating with the people I love the most, the diatribe in my head goes a little like this: there is so much to cover and share, but I also don’t want to have a conversation where I dominate the whole thing; I want to hear about their lives, but I will be sad about all that I have missed; the longer we don’t chat the more there is to cover and the more disconnected we are, but it’s already so much; our lives are so different now, how can I paint the picture of my life so that they can relate; how could they compare, this is a totally alien life from anything even I experienced back home; PLOW! BOOM! BANG! I’m resting my head on my arms and entirely exhausted. It’s totally brutal, and it’s all me in my own chatter-box brain.

At the beginning of our time in Madagascar, this dilemma took a slightly different form. I felt anger and judgment toward folks back home because 1) they weren’t experiencing the discomfort I was 2) they were in cushy, comfortable relationships with their lives while I felt like my life blindsided me and broke up with me 3) I wanted my old life back and resented them for getting to keep theirs 4) I felt like no one was asking me enough questions or checking-in enough (in truth, nothing would have been enough) 5) folks kept making comments about how I was living the “dream life,” presumably to help make me feel better, but I took it as everyone assuming I was on some grand, never-ending vacation where in reality I felt like my identity, purpose, and community was crumbling around me. It’s reasonable to assess that none of these presumptions were accurate on my part and I was just having a pretty rough go for 6-weeks. And truly, at the bottom of it all, I just missed the people that I’ve surrounded myself with for the past many years. They have been my comfort, my inspiration, my joy, and I didn’t know how to navigate life without them.

I am thrilled to report that I am happily on the other side of my existential meltdown and can clearly and thoughtfully see past the wallowing. With this clarity, I realize that my heartbeat friends and family can exist in a world where I live 8,700+ miles away from them and we can all be happily engaged in the goings on of each other’s lives. Even if we don’t know the nitty-gritty and don’t talk on the reg, we will always be there for each other, do our best to understand and relate to whatever is going on, and love each other endlessly. So, uh, now I need to pick up the phone and tell these fine folks precisely this conclusion. BRB.

I shared [part of] this confession with my fellow book club goers, and it felt so good to get it out and to share it with a room full of women that could relate to these feelings and offer reasoning and solutions. Some of these women have lived 15+ years overseas, and they have inspiring marriages and offspring, friends around the globe, supportive folks back home, and they have seen this planet up and down. It is not always a smooth road, and things are hard, but community near and far make it all doable.

And hot dog I am over-the-moon thankful for the fantastic people I have met along this little life path of mine. From Cait and Kelsey who have known me since Kindergarten and 7th grade to Heidi and Jim who I have met in the past 9 weeks, I have had the privilege of befriending the cream of the crop, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

Zane, another great human I’ve met recently, shared a perspective-altering quote with me last week:

“When asked if my cup is half-full or half-empty my only response is that I am thankful I have a cup.” – Sam Lefkowitz

I am thankful for my cup, for the friends and family that fill it up, and for the love and support that abounds as I trudge my way through this life. My cup runneth over.