I’ve found that culture shock is more tricky than I imagined. It is a rope slipping through sweaty fingers; there are many moments when I think I’ve grasped it, only to realize it is slipping from me again, creating more tears and discomfort. This image isn’t particularly pleasant, but neither is the image of transformation!

When I first arrived, I didn’t feel anything that I thought I could label culture shock, so I was a little confused about what I was supposed to be feeling. Then, after some weeks, I thought culture shock was the intense discomfort that every day tasks required, and the desire to avoid even simple things, like going to a convenience store. Then, I thought that culture shock was the inability to read people’s personalities through a simultaneous cultural/language barrier. I couldn’t understand if people liked me or if they were just being polite, I didn’t know how to joke or receive jokes, and I didn’t know “what kind of person” anyone was because I could not use any familiar judgments or signals (which with time I realized is actually more positive than anything: I lost the ability to impose preconceived judgments onto people and began to see them with what felt like “fresh” eyes and an open mind). Along with this, I thought that culture shock was a feeling of loss- pieces of your personality, values, and humor, are all trapped in a cultural and linguistic limbo that cannot penetrate an air too thick for its narrowly defined edges.

But soon, I started to see myself from beyond the borders of my new memory, from which an entire ocean lies to cleanse, where my self is not a product of an eternal essence belonging to me, but a wet piece of clay that has been dredged from its bed and lovingly molded anew in the warmth of movement. I have always equated my “greatness,” or the pursuit of it, to an expense, a cost, or a sacrifice. I did not see how much of my self was sunken into my environment- the river refracted the light- until I could finally see how the river carved the bank from above its surface, now sizzling upon a yellow boulder under the sun. My origin definite, but my shape’s formation reliant on its relative position.

From the bed of the river, it was impossible to see how much my notion of self and happiness were steeped in liberalism and the desire for expedition. I’ve never seen myself as a staunch individualist, but from the boulder, I realize that I am accustomed to taking more than I give- that what can make me great is different from what makes me happy. My future isn’t as clear to me anymore.

Culture shock is solidifying to me that change is pain. Every day, I think I finally understand what I was told about this experience, and how hard it could be, but I am always proved wrong in ways I couldn’t even imagine! It excites me to think of what else there is to hold up and turn under the sun, to see in a new light. I have never felt so estranged from myself and yet so close to that something that has been waiting for me to finally turn around and greet it.