Besides, I feel content for what I have achieved during my year in the UK, academically and (especially) mentally: got MSc Oceanography degree with a Merit after struggling with hard times in uni and in personal life, worked well for my research project on corals that gave me good impression in front of my profs I admire, made true friendships that I treasure a lot and likely to last, made priceless memories with those friends, traveled to amazing places in the UK and Europe, saw and played in snow (yes it is important and legendary), and became a slightly better, stronger version of me (stated by some of my closest friends). Thus said, going back home would be a nice and balanced closure for this journey, before preparing myself for another journey the future might offer later.
But no, it is not as easy as it sounded. Going back home is more difficult than I have ever thought. I have heard a bunch of stories about how Indonesian students found it difficult to readjust themselves and expectations to the environment they were once familiar with after living abroad for a while. They were said to compare both places a lot. At the time I was thinking, ‘Ah I won’t be one of them if I had the chance, I won’t be cocky or spoiled like that.’ But to hell, my friends, I now understand that it was not about being cocky or not, it is something we sometimes couldn’t just avoid consciously (although not everyone experiences it). I know that for sure because, in fact, I now got struck by the unfamiliar REVERSE CULTURE SHOCK. And it shook me. For me, this reverse culture shock is much stronger than my past culture shock.
For those who do not know what reverse culture shock is, here I quickly grabbed the definition from Google: “Reverse culture shock is the emotional and psychological distress suffered by some people when they return home after a number of years overseas. This can result in unexpected difficulty in readjusting to the culture and values of the home country, now that the previously familiar has become unfamiliar.” I first knew about the term from the website of which the scholarship I got funded my study, a few months before the end of term time. I was curious about it but I waved it as I thought it wouldn’t be a big problem when I get back home. It took me by surprise. Here is what I have been experiencing until now since I arrived home.
Day one – foreign feeling
Once I stepped out of the airport building in Jakarta I was surprised by how hot it was even though it was at night. The heat was so stuffy I couldn’t breathe easily. The heaviness on breathing made me a little panicky. The heat made me feel uncomfortable, it felt like I was veiled by a thin film of compressed vapour I really wanted to shake off.
It was nice meeting my family again, my sister and her husband picked me up at the airport. They even gave me flowers. At home, I got balloons and some written greetings on the balloons from my fam. I was glad that my whole family were there, even my brother who works in Singapore and his wife and my cute nephew. But after all the merriment, came a weird feeling creeping into me as I was off to my room to end the day. I expected to feel home, nice and comfortable but I didn’t feel that way.
In my room, I fell silent. I felt odd, really really odd. I didn’t feel home and I didn’t feel comfortable. I felt very sensitive and easily got irritated by small things. Dusty air in the room. Noises from the neighbours. The messiness. The different toilet system. No toilet paper. Dirty sink. I felt confused inside. One thing I knew was that I started to feel panicky, down and unreasonably sad. In addition, since I arrived at the airport, I started to feel overwhelmed translating my thoughts and feelings to my mother language, that’s odd! It’s not that I speak perfect English, I just got used to expressing my mind in English, thinking in English. I felt awkward to always talk in Indonesian to everyone at the airport. Never in a year, I thought I would feel this way.
That night I couldn’t sleep, jetlag drama did not help at this kind of time. I didn’t sleep during my 16-h flight from the UK so I expected myself to be deadly sleepy by then but I wasn't. I was really tired but I was wide awake until 5 am. And oh even the prayer call at 4 am (and not only from 1 mosque) was irritating for me and made me stressed after every small thing that night.
Day two – confusion and anxiety
Jetlag was not helping at all. I felt tired all day and I was shivering during the day the same way I did if I did not sleep at night catching up a deadline. I felt dizzy and I did not have any appetite. Even though I was spending time together with my family and that my nephew was a real entertaining object, I still felt even more down and stressed inside. Small things got me more irritated, I was getting sensitive over them. Kids noise from outside of the house, motorcycle noise, moist air, hot feet, unfamiliar order in my house.
I slept during the day but I still felt tired when I woke up. I felt guilty for waking up late and being half-zombied to my family. But believe me, I was trying hard to be a little bit more cheerful in front of my family because I know they are glad that I am finally home again.
I felt more and more odd and sad that day. I was suddenly experiencing strong confusion that I couldn’t translate into anything. I did not know what was happening in me. I felt angry. The strong confusion made my perception narrower and I did not expect that. This led me to feel anxious. Anxiety attacked me. I thought I would feel like I did before I left the country but I don’t. I also felt more confused as it needed extra effort to express my thoughts in Indonesian. I was shocked to feel how I felt and that made things worse. I felt guilty.
I started to google some articles about reverse culture shock but I couldn’t concentrate reading long writings. My focus was blurry. That was when I thought I may need some help. I contacted some friends, but it didn’t solve it. One could not respond much at the moment and honestly that hurt me. Another one supported me to find help but it seemed that he didn’t understand how I felt completely because I couldn’t explain it clearly at that time.
Day three – exhaustion and mental haziness
My shock and the jetlag combined is the worst thing. I still felt shivering during the day, dizzy and still no appetite. The last one is quite ironic because I had been longing for proper Indonesian food before I got back but now, I couldn’t even think about food whatsoever. I started to somehow feel depressed and physically exhausted from the lack of sleep.
Coming back home is also difficult because it means that I would have less privacy than I used to have in the UK which I enjoyed a lot. Not that I am ignorant (or maybe I am) or indifferent towards my family but living in the same roof with other 4 family members requires you to be more social, caring and emotionally available almost at all times. That change indeed needs some kind of mental preparedness for me.
I did not feel like I was in my usual self. I felt mentally hazy and could not read the reality. I knew that I needed help, any help. I talked with more friends about it. One of them understood how I felt, although he thinks my case is rather extreme because the differences between my home country and the UK are quite vast. He was once an Erasmus student and they used to call such reverse culture shock as Post Erasmus Depression. He helped me to accept my shock and to realise what I am currently experiencing. He thinks that is normal and that is okay to experience that. He also thinks I need to slowly make some efforts to readjust and adapt to the current environment I am currently living in. What came to my mind next was obvious, I need to go out and see my friends.
Day four – a spiral of negative thoughts
I made a plan to see my friends the next day, a good thing. Since I realised my problem, I tried to be patient with it and distracting myself with other stuff. I tried to gather some energy to do some activities that can make me feel more comfortable at home. I started cleaning up, tidying up and decluttering my room. I spent time with my family as my brother, his wife and my nephew came again today. I also tried to focus more on dad, thinking about what I can do to help him or to help my family taking care of him.
I did make an effort that day, but I still felt sad being home regardless. Seeing my dad being sick and not being able to completely taking care of himself is difficult. He was not like this when I left home, so I am not used to seeing this. It was also hard to see my mom taking care of everything for him. I could not imagine how tired they are (my mom and sis), physically and maybe mentally, to keep doing things and to always be available at home. I felt worried about that. About my dad being sick is another story but in short, there are some worrisome thoughts coming from this situation.
Apart from that, I also felt some kind of hollowness in me. Having to tackle the shock, jet lag, changes at home at the same time while suffering from an unresolved pain in my chest is hard. Really hard. I remember that night I was suddenly bursting into tears and wishing I could disappear. I think this mental breakdown is one thing that made my jetlag even worse. I started to feel that one by one my negative thoughts were spiralling up creating a mental tornado in my mind. My sad Christmas day, my uncertain future, my family, my desire to go away from Jakarta, my broken trust and bond to an important one, my confusion and false expectation, my burning jealousy, abstract predictions towards the coming days, etc. etc.
It was Christmas day. I was remembering my last Christmas and how warm and nice was that. I was wondering how my friends spent Christmas in their places, making me jealous. I didn’t actively say “Merry Christmas” that day just simply because I didn’t feel merry. It was a blue Christmas for me. Since having lived in the UK, Christmas is not something religious for me, unlike here in Indonesia. It’s more a cultural thing, holiday season when people are happy, merry and enjoying the festive time with family and friends. Christmas trees, Christmas dinner, Christmas presents, Christmas walk. I liked those. Well, at least this Christmas I still spent time with my whole family. That’s one thing I felt really grateful for that day.
Day five – disorientation
This was the day when I met my closest girlfriends. Going to the location I needed to take gojek (Indonesian brand of online motorcycle taxi). I got another shock: pollution. I knew and expected this even before I came home but I did not completely remember how it felt to breathe in pollution in Jakarta’s roads. I have some minor issues with my breathing system. When I was in the UK I got some asthma reactions because of tiredness in the cold weather and pollen season in spring. Can you imagine how I feel coming back to a polluted big city like Jakarta? My throat felt burning and my stomach felt acidic after the gojek ride and it was stressful to breathe properly during the ride.
Another shock came from people who were easily staring at strangers on the street, in the mall, etc. I felt so weird by that. In the UK, I enjoyed some space and distance people have and give between strangers. Here, I was extremely irritated just because there was a guy staring at me on the road while I was on the gojek and he was on his motorbike. It is something common in Indonesia but I am weirded out by this now.
Going to a mall was also overwhelming. I felt disoriented. Lots of people, noises, the current price of food (expensive!), confusing currency. For example, I went to a store and bought toiletries, I was surprised by how much I spent only to buy those things. I was so confused it weirdly put tension in my head and my chest.
But anyway, meeting my friends I missed the most was really nice. We talked a lot about current things in our lives. Although the conversation was dominated mostly by our current concern on how millennials can get rich haha. It was really interesting and for me, distracting. It was a talk for my soul.
At night I was back feeling like a walking dead, purposeless. As I was off to my room, distractions were gone. I stopped for a while and thinking. I tried to collect all my courage to look at my situation in the eye. I grabbed my laptop and started writing. I started writing down all the things that I have been experiencing in an attempt to better understand what is happening in me. I was digging myself in, capturing my stream of thoughts. I thought to myself that maybe by doing this I can see more clearly of how handling it better.
Afterthoughts
I know it seems that I am complaining a lot in this writing but I honestly just wanted to show how weird it is to have a reverse culture shock. And that’s okay. Right now (day 7), it is getting slightly better although there is always something each day that annoys me and makes me feel uncomfortable (for example, someone cut my queue in a cashier). The heat I was looking forward to in the UK is still also too much for me now, making me feel lethargic and moody. My jet lag has not gone yet either but I am feeling less exhausted. I can understand better how I feel now even though I can say that I still feel mentally unstable and slightly confused. I will see how I handle it later by simply being patient and keep making effort to readjust and readapt to my environment, the same way I do and I did when I travel to places.
The most important things when you get reverse culture shock are I think to realise it, accept it, and reach out. It is important to talk to people who might understand/close friends or just writing it out. Find help if you think you need it, read around about the topic, and make some effort to readjust by doing something small and real. Take things slow, do a small thing at a time, if needed take one day or half a day at a time. From what I read, it will pass. Or maybe it will be magnified in one way or another, but that too shall pass.
For those who travel, one thing I can say that may or may not help when facing the same shock: bring your traveller's heart with you wherever you are going, including your home. Just see it as another adventure, rather than a journey home. Because after all, the concept of "home" is maybe just an illusion (well that is another topic for next time!).
I loved what you've written to bits. Somehow, you've made me think the unthinkable in the clearest, most honest way... hang in there. I'm here if you need a chat ( in English haha) or even just a reminiscence about our good times sipping those multiple glasses of Manchester gin conversing on these cultural differences we have all anticipated. Good on ya for speaking your mind... Hugs :)
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