The Floating Dock (and what is 'reverse culture shock', anyway?')

Most of the Google searches on Reverse Culture Shock (aka 'Re-entry') yield blogs of young students and missionaries returning after a tour, or business articles for staff positioned abroad and ending contracts. Some people have even devised U-curves and W-graphs to demonstrate the process graphically.  Many describe it as, surprisingly, a more difficult adjustment than culture shock when moving abroad. 

In 1992 after I was a university student abroad in London, I experienced a brief taste of reverse culture shock. I wasn't ready to leave London, and resented returning to the big, loud, sunny west coast. I was 20. 

Younger students, religious missionaries, seconded professionals living abroad from six months to four years: none of these are quite the same as resettling abroad to be married for what you think will be the rest of your natural life, or at least 30 years until retirement.  I emigrated 'permanently' at 31 and left three months shy of 41. 

The initial arrival and adjustment phase when relocating to a foreign country is essentially a short flurry of excitement followed by a grieving process. In 2004-05, I went through all the stages of grief while I reflected on the loss of my old identity as an independent woman established in North Beach, San Francisco. 

If I'd still been fiercely attached to California in 2004, I wouldn't have left when I did. I was ready for a new adventure. (For those who know of the story of my time in Wales, it was not quite the adventure I'd hoped for). 

Returning now in 2013 feels like I've been dropped on a floating dock in the middle of a familiar lake. I see the shore and know it, but don't really feel like swimming towards it. I also don't have a desire to go back where I just came from. Where does one go after London? I know I want change, but for now I am perched on the dock, assessing my future options. 

When I left the US, I was already a reasonably mature adult with an identity and strong sense of self. That all had to be re-invented in the UK, and it took a long time. (The bureaucracy there did not make it efficient, by any means). 

I found being a citizen in my non-native country across the Atlantic meant I was, consciously or unconsciously, systematically filtering and navigating my way through a series of many small (some large) adjustments in order to survive.  I had to develop a set of heuristics tailored to UK living. 

For example, understanding and obeying the unwritten and unspoken 'rules' of traffic, whether you are a pedestrian, cyclist or motorist is necessary if you want to live.

My new environment eventually became normal and my expectations were realigned.

So how does a middle-aged person reconcile that to adequately fit in to their hometown again? 

I've never stayed in my hometown for more than three weeks as a adult. I left at 17 for university. It's been a month and the presence of my serene surroundings that may have made me restless at 16 are actually comforting and pleasant now.

(There is nothing significant to the font color changes; I only mixed it up to thwart your potential ennui)

~Em