Wine and Cheese: two of life's simple joys
Regarding last post: I like honesty. That's a bit like saying, "I like pie" or "I like peace," but there you have it. I avoided posting for a while because anything I would have written would've been dishonest. The separation and uprootedness, the loneliness, the feeling of, "holy shitballs, what am I doing here?!" - all of it has been a fairly consuming part of my experience in the last couple of months. To have written much else would have been an exercise in deleting the largest part of the truth. Still, I didn't really want to admit the extent of my struggles publicly. "People aren't interested in that," I thought to myself.
The gravity of this monumental life change - this move to Finland - has begun to hit me rather hard, particularly as I witness things progressing at home, through Skype or Facebook or the news, without my participation. Watching everything unfold through a digital lens has been a blessing and a curse, both comforting and alienating. I am made aware of births, deaths, birthdays, dinners, parties, opinions on sequestration, movies watched, books read, places visited, storms, conflict, sickness, health...and so much more. I want to know about such things and maintain a connection to my old life, but perusing the broadcast over Facebook and Twitter makes me hunger for more. I want to see those hills up close. I want to make dinner and drink wine with people I love. I want to exist where I'm normal and average and unremarkable.
Viewing things through this selective digital lens also causes me to forget the reasons I moved away in the first place: life without Rami, awful healthcare, poor job prospects, etc. On the internet, life is exciting, happy and healthy, with the occasional tragedy. It is never boring, depressed, or lonely.
My motivation in sharing all this is to not fall victim to the syndrome that I know full well many of my connections on Facebook suffer from. You know, the need to paint life as one rosy, poignant, optimistic fun-fest. I don't believe that my writing will ever be criticized for being overly optimistic (it's not as if I've never complained about being homesick before), yet it has often skirted around the major problems that I face every day. Well, I'd like not to do that anymore. It's dishonest, and it's potentially harmful to those who might read this blog and think, "Well, look at her. She's doing just fine. What's wrong with me?" I'm not doing fine. I'm struggling to fit in, to integrate and to be happy. I suck at this. You now have my whole-hearted, genuine permission to look at me and feel superior.
(For more on Facebook exacerbating loneliness, check out this article.)
I don't want to overestimate my importance in the larger expat community. I'm but an intermittent, rambling presence in a sea of better things to read. Even so, it seems important to say this: if you're reading this and you're homesick, unsure of yourself, feeling low and wondering where to go from here, know that I am, too.
What am I doing to lift myself out of this funk? I've been looking for job and volunteer opportunities. I've been trying to stop hiding by going out to one of these two excellent coffee shops, or to this awesome wine bar, for example. I'm constantly searching for new music, my latest infatuation being with Efterklang (but I've been countering it with a lot of an older favorite, Type O Negative). Barring disasters or sudden busyness, I'll be taking a trip to Helsinki this weekend. I spend my days studying Finnish, reading English, and writing an 'erotic novel' (i.e. porn). Why that last thing? Because it amuses me. Deal with it.
In short, I've been hiding for too long, in real life as well as electronic life. Fuck that.
Oh, god, this comment is going to be a book. I wonder if blogger has a word limit? Let's find out!
ReplyDeleteI used to have another blog, one that detailed my life as a single woman, dating, and I shared things there that were mind-boggling to me, if I stop and think about it. I am generally not a sharer, not about the personal stuff. But on that blog, I shared, and overshared. And you know what I found out? A lot of times, people read blogs to help them feel that they are not alone. Hands down, the best comments I ever got were the ones that said, "Thank you, this is exactly how I feel, it's so good to know I'm not the only one." *Those* are the people I want reading my blog, because those people are *me.* While the internet has the power to make people disconnect, like the FB loneliness problem, it also has the power to make people connect, to remind us that we are not alone.
I read a blog post a while back, and I meant to write a blog post about it, but never did and now I've forgotten where I read it. But it was essentially about the idea that the blogger always felt the need to be Shiny and Happy all the time on her blog, and she (he?) wondered why? After all, she reasoned, life isn't like that all the time. So why not write the bad stuff, too? Because it's there, it exists, and if this blog is about your life, then darn it, you should include it! I know it can be hard - there have been several blog posts I've *wanted* to write, but didn't feel I should, for fear of hurting people or sounding ungrateful or hateful. It's a hard thing, to decide which is more important, being brutally honest or hiding those thoughts. Best idea: write it out, then sit on it for a week. When you look at it again, is it still the right thing to post? Were those feelings just a case of mopiness, or are they more than that? Will expressing those feeling potentially make someone feel as if you're speaking to or for them?
Of course, I've also read blogs that were *always* down in the dumps. People who were always sad and lonely and upset and were never happy. No one wants to read that! Not when *that's all there is.* But there's a happy medium in there somewhere.
I know how you feel, feeling left out of things while watching your "old world" go by on FB. I've been there. Heck, I'm still there a lot of days. Of course, I also know I'm only here temporarily. I'll be back home in the US within the next year or two. Of course, that makes me less invested in trying *here*. That's not really a good thing, I know.
*Hugs*, best wishes, You are not alone. Wish we lived closer to each other...
Thanks for this, Sara. It sounds like your previous blog reached a lot of people. It must have been a cool experience to write your brutally honest thoughts and have people respond to them. In that kind of scenario, I agree that it's a case of technology bringing us together rather than pushing us apart or adding to our loneliness.
DeleteAnd, sure, blogs aren't just happy and shiny - they can be quite the opposite, too. I guess what I value is honesty and, though it's totally okay to tilt things towards positivity, the closer to the truth, the better. Of course, it requires some self-censorship and some thought on what you're willing to share with the internet but, hey, it's a challenge.
I can imagine it's both nice and sort of hard knowing that Finland won't be your permanent home. Judging by your blog, though, you seem to be making the most of your life, and that'll probably be exactly what you remember about your time in Finland. :)
Thanks for the kind words and the insight. I also wish we lived closer! I know quite literally zero Americans here in LPR. Oh well. :P
Everyone likes good things. But it only really counts if you like them even when they're inconvenient. (I think someone should teach that to all extremists.)
ReplyDeleteThe shock had to come sooner or later. By making the whole thing an intellectual challenge, you only postponed it, but I think the effort you spent on getting the prerequisite language skills will serve you well in your recovery, provided that is what you want. (There's always another option.)
I think I should point out that nowadays most people aren't anywhere near as close to their family as you seemed to be and that contributes to your feelings of alienation. If I understand correctly, you grew up almost a neighbour to your cousins, etc. That sort of clumping will also pull more relatives from further away fully into the mix when they're visiting and probably result in more visits too. It would be a different story altogether if your cousins had lived across the town or even farther.
Make use of the sun, now that it's there again. That will help.
Sorry about the half-assed arm-chair analysis, based mainly on lack of anything tangible.
No, you're on to something with the family bit. Missing them has made this experience much more difficult than it would have been otherwise. I had a really strong, irreplaceable social network, and it's going to take an unimaginably long time to build another one half as strong.
DeleteAs for "the other option", I'm not even entertaining those thoughts for the time being. I like living here, and I always knew it was going to require a lot of work. I guess I just didn't realize how inept I'd be at doing said work. I'm really seeing my personal weaknesses very clearly under the stress of winter, homesickness, etc. That can only be a good thing, right? And yes, studying the language has really been a bright spot in the midst of everything else.
The sun has already begun to help. I can't even explain how relieved I am to see it!
"The other option" thing just came to mind. I'm not trying to run you out of the country and I didn't think you'd go for it, either. I just think it's always important to recognize that there is a choice. You always have control over your life.
DeleteThere was this great line by Ed O'Neill about choices in... I think it was in Big Apple. Basically, it was something along the lines of "when you're back against the wall, you can simply turn around and you'll see there's a door there, you just have to walk through it". He was a cop and telling it to some criminal. Afterwards he tells his partner it was just something he made up, but I thought it was brilliant. I don't think the writers of the show fully appreciated the gem they pulled out of their hat.
You know, there are always options, but we often disregard many of them simply because we choose to think them as unacceptable by some possibly arbitrary standard. Which is how you end up without options. We tend to forget we get to choose those standards. The ones we are entertaining at any one time may well be an impossible combination. I think it's good to remember that we choose to limit our choices.
Not that I think this applies to you, but you know. But that was the larger idea behind the parenthesized expression.
That is a brilliant line. You're absolutely right about not placing unnecessary and self-imposed limits on our options, which is something I am prone to do. I could've explained this better, though: it's not that I've never "entertained the thought" of going home. Quite the opposite, actually, in these difficult months. I've concluded, though, that leaving would be cowardly and I'd regret it immensely. So I've found it unhelpful to ruminate on going home, because it makes me sad and syphons needed energy from actually trying to be happy here and now. That's what I meant, I guess. And I didn't think you were trying to push me towards the exit. ;)
DeleteNo, no. I fully got you. You've made a conscious choice. It was just a leap of thought on my part, really.
DeleteUnwillingness to revisit decisions when need arises may also lead to an unhappy life. Everyone imposes unnecessary limits on themselves and I would think that is the most common one. It's just applying the very human short-hand of using previous results or instincts to one's life.
I don't mean to offend you but unwillingness to act cowardly probably isn't a very good reason to do or not do something either. Just as being a coward is a lousy reason, overcompensating isn't good. It's often just erring in the other direction: cowardice of being seen as coward - either by yourself or someone else.
But I suppose you meant that you want to give this a proper go before re-evaluating your decision and not just give up at the first chance. It's a smart, neutral position, AFAICT. But that all depends on your evaluation of the options.
It'll take quite a bit more than that to offend me. (Not that I'm inviting you to try...)
DeleteBut yes, I think you picked up on what I meant by "cowardly"; leaving now would be giving up too easily, and all because of what is most likely a temporary bout of the doldrums. It's definitely not rooted in any kind of bravado or whatever - I am fully aware of the fact that I'm a generally a huge pansy. Sufficient time will tell me if moving here was a mistake, together with a lot of recalibrating, learning and genuine effort. I haven't done nearly all I can to make it work here.
Anyway, point taken regarding not staying if it simply isn't going to work out. I'll re-evaluate as needed.
Wait... I had point?
DeleteWho knew it would turn out to be such a lousy one?
Ahhhh...it does feel weird knowing how life has changed in the home country. That's probably one reason why I know I'll have culture shock if I have to live in Indo again (the longer I stay in Finland, the bigger the culture shock's gonna be). I have a friend who lived in Germany for 5-6 years and then she got back to Indo and boy, she did experience culture shock. I think it's even worse than the culture shock she experienced when she first moved to Germany, 'coz after all, you're "supposed" to know your own home country and its quirks, no?
ReplyDeleteGOOD LUCK in finding jobs and volunteer work! I hope you'll feel more at home in Finland bit by bit. :-) It does take time to find your own "place to belong" esp. in a new country. (((HUGS)))
Yeah, culture shock certainly goes both ways. My goal is to try to hold onto my identity as a New Englander (never really identified as an American per se...) while adopting and accepting Finnish culture into my thoughts and behavior. So far it's working, but...well, I feel as if Finland belongs in me, but I don't belong in Finland. It's not as if anyone has ever made me feel like I don't belong here, and yet I just...don't. It's something I need to get over, clearly.
DeleteThanks for the supportive words. :)
Well, I've never felt truly Indonesian (as I've probably told you via email), though I'm Indonesian in probably many ways. I'm influenced by Finnish and its culture now, so I'm less "Indonesian" than before, but I'll never be completely Finnish no matter how long I stay here. I can't say I belong in Finland in general (people knows that I look like a foreigner), but at least I feel that I do belong in my "circle of trust": my family, R2's family, my friends, my current workplace. Anyway, may you find your way then. :-)
DeleteYou can´t go wrong with Type O.
ReplyDeleteAgreed!
DeleteHey Elena! Very nice to read about your thoughts again - not so nice to read about your struggling! :( But don't worry, people are not as mean as one might think, so I think you can feel free to be honest about your feelings! Anyway, first of all, I totally burst into laughter (in Finnish we'd say "Minä repesin (nauramaan)" ) when I was reading about your novel writing! Maybe you could publish it and thus make millions? A new 50 shades of grey? Hmm, actually the name "50 shades of grey" fits Finland quite precisely, if you know what I mean :D
ReplyDeleteAbout the struggling part, I'd "diagnose" you with "kaamosmasennus" which translates into "polar night depression". Like you said, the sun is already helping you a lot and that's the case with lot of people here! But that's really just one of the downsides of living in this fucking country :D In fact, I gotta really appreciate you and all the other expats who struggle here. You know: it's dark, it's bloody cold (even now when it's supposed to be Spring), people are introverted, not very talkative, the country is boring, nothing's happening (and if there is, you don't really understand the newspapers), everything is pretty expensive so you can't go out much and so on and so forth... So, I totally understand if you feel like "what the hell am I doing here?" - I'm feeling like that and I'm a Finn! But yeaah, I guess there are still some good things also...
I'd say the biggest problem is probably being jobless, because, regardless of being an expat or not, being jobless is very dangerous in the long run! So I really hope you'd find a good job, because that would really give you more content in life! :) But obviously, it's easier said than done. So, while working at it, I'd advice to get the content otherwise.. Maybe by starting a new hobby? I would argue that, also in Lappeenranta, there are a lot of sports, arts and other kind of activities you could join in. For instance, I started to play badminton this winter after 10 years - and I love it! Also, book a holiday somewhere where you've always wanted to go! Why? Well, I just booked flights to Ibiza again and I got such a boost in my life with that! Because obviously, now there's something I can wait for and I don't know - maybe it gives some perspective in life? :)
Anyway, I wish all the best for you and remember: it's the vernal equinox, so now the days are longer ;)
Welcome back, Aaron! Haha, I have no idea what I'll do with the novel, but I actually started it before the 50 Shades of Grey craze, perhaps three years ago, and I only just started on it again. Yes, "50 Shades of Grey" does sound very Finnish, especially this time of year! I'd love to publish it and make millions. That'll never happen, but I can dream! ;)
ReplyDeleteYou're right - the winter was certainly affecting me. I know that for sure now because the little signs of spring have been putting me in a much better, more motivated mood. I always experience a little depression in the winter, but I think feeling so lonely and removed from my home was making it ten times worse. The same goes for my job situation; I'm getting a lot more teaching work lately, which has also helped me to feel more satisfied and productive. So, good news all around.
I've never really been a sporty person, besides running and some weightlifting on my own, but it might be a good way to pass the time. Badminton IS fun. Perhaps I'll have to consider that.
Congratulations on your upcoming trip to Ibiza! When do you leave? :)
Thanks, glad to be back! Hehee, perhaps you ought to get the novel evaluated with someone? And if there is potential, then maybe you should publish it with some smaller publisher and make it kind of a "side business" and then perhaps some day you WILL make the millions! ;) Yes, I'm always this overly optimistic - deal with it :D
DeleteOh yes, of course you are in fact teaching English! Well that definitely sounds good and nice to hear things are improving on that front as well. Hmm.. I can't recall what was your profession or degree, was it Master in English language or something like that? It's just that if the teaching job feels like something you could do more, there are quite a lot of opportunities.
For example in my school, which is a University of Applied Sciences, many of the English teachers are in fact expats from the US. And some of them are also teaching in a local high school also. I have a feeling the University of Applied Sciences in Lappeenranta could be similar.. Maybe look into that?
Also, you could apply to a an actual University as a student. There you could get the pedagogical competence of an actual teacher which would obviously improve the salary a lot.
You're married so you must be a citizen already? You see, being a student in Finland doesn't necessary mean you have take loan since the Universities don't have any semester fees whatsoever. In fact, the government pays you gratuitous student grant of 270-500€ a month depending on the income of your spouse.
Well, Ibiza is gonna happen from 7th 'til 15th of June - in the middle of the biggest opening parties..! I am so thrilled about it! I already booked the flights and everything before even asking holiday from my work.. And if I don't get it, I'll quit the damn job :D