I def think you can have a sense of cultural dislocation. For me, it was esp bad around the 3 year mark. I would go back to the US and it wouldn't be quite right. I would be here and it wouldn't be quite right. Very strange feeling.
Love your posts as always, citygirl. I'm going on three years total living outside the U.S. and it's a strange feeling indeed. "Cultural dislocation" is a great way to describe it. Does it ever change? At first it was a bit unnerving, but I'm just going with it. I spent a little more than two years in BA (plus a previous study abroad, but I don't even count that), six months in the U.S. recovering and working that went by in an instant, left again to Spain for grad school, am coming back to BA to finish school soon and then am moving to be with my boyfriend. All of my grad school classmates are from the U.S. too, all have done either a year abroad teaching or at the least a study abroad, and yet I feel different from them in many ways. And of course, not being Spanish or Argentine, I am always different from the locals, too, no matter how much I may identify with and/or appreciate many aspects of both cultures. But my first 9-5 salaried job, my first time fully supporting myself, my first serious adult relationship, my first scary, drawn-out health crisis...All of these things happened in BA. I essentially became an adult there. It wasn't an easy place to become an adult, but Madrid has been so easy breezy as a result. It takes a LOT to stress me out or upset me nowadays. I mean, something really bad has to go down for my heart rate to elevate in the slightest.
I see my classmates stress and obsess and completely freak out over school, and I am so happy to have been able to leave that American perfectionist, work-obsessed cultural baggage behind. Props to my mom and dad as well for not being helicopter parents. A classmate's mom sent her four e-mails correcting a cover letter for a job application, sheesh. Another's parents constantly e-mail her, asking when grades come out. (!!!) How do they expect their now-adult children to succeed in the real world when they've never truly done anything on their own?? But I digress...
So I guess in a way I am in limbo, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing. I like the person I have become thanks to my experiences, challenging as they have been. I will surely have many future challenges. Colombia is no cakewalk, and I don't know how long we'll be there. Could be quite some time, depending on how things go. I do know that the longer I'm gone, the more distant I feel from the U.S., and in some ways that makes me sad. But honestly, even if I were still there, my life would probably not be as I have imagined it might be. For one thing, since I left just after graduating college, most of my friends have scattered to the wind, from New York City to Rio de Janeiro, following jobs and dreams. Some of my older friends are married; two are pregnant with their second babies. My point is, even if I had stayed in the same place, I doubt I would have remotely the same social circle as I did in college. I see extended family with the frequency I did before I left, around once a year on holidays. That's just the reality of U.S. life. People move, a lot. Families are sprinkled across the country, and friendships are often transitory. It is what it is, for better or for worse.
So this dark side of expat** life, yes, I suppose it exists. But I'm just fine with not knowing where I'm going to end up, for now.
**Expat, immigrant, enough with the semantics. The people who argue that they are immigrants seem to want to differentiate themselves as superior, as if they are special or unique, or that their experience is more authentic or what have you. I tend to think of an immigrant as someone who left his or her country to escape political/economic strife, persecution, violence, etc. but who cares? You're a foreigner in Buenos Aires. The fact that you have no plans to leave does not make you a special snowflake.
