New Normal

A friend of mine told me a few months ago that once I hit the one year mark, things would "just click into place." At the time, I was struggling with homesickness, wanting to be in two places at once, and just general discomfort with life in Cambodia. Needless to say, I didn't totally believe her.

Fast forward. I was driving down the road today, after taking some volunteers to visit one of our field projects. A year ago, I rode in the car on the way to Vietnam to take care of my visa. What a difference a year makes! It struck me today, as I cruised down the road, conversing with one of my favorite Cambodian staff members, that I finally feel comfortable in Cambodia. Click.

It's been hitting me in other ways, too. I'm performing a lot of the same tasks that I did for last year's ESL program. Yet this year, I'm so much more confident about decision-making, more able to do things on my own, answer questions, and just generally be in charge. In fact, I've started bragging to my colleagues about how I can do things without their help this year, and how relieved they must be. Click.

I still receive emails related to ongoing activities among the grad students at USC. For a year, it felt like my life was running on two tracks-- the one that I was living in Cambodia, and the one I might have been living in Los Angeles. Today was the first time I read one of those emails (literally, I usually delete them!), and felt like that life was really, truly, in the past, instead of an alternate reality to the one I am experiencing. Click.

As I'm examining how, well, normal it is for me to be in Cambodia, I'm shocked at how I can trace the simultaneous development of my emotions. I'm finally feeling like myself in Cambodia, though there have been glimmers along the way. Of course, I've changed and grown, but those essentials, the things I had forgotten, had put away in the midst of transition--important stuff, like confidence, extraversion, and a personality that I'm only now reacquainting myself with-- they are blooming again, as I'm able to be Kate. For so long I felt like "Kate who moved to Cambodia." Now I simply feel like "Kate, who lives in Cambodia." The subtle semantics of that sentence, and even that little comma, are somehow important to me, to how I feel about my life here.

I've heard--and whether it's true or not, who knows-- that the worst part of grief for someone we've lost fades after a year and a bit. There's a lingering sadness, but it's the year (and that extra bit) which is necessary for our world to settle into a new kind of normal. Maybe I've been grieving for the loss of my own former life, maybe that's a lie. Sure, it's still hard, there are things I don't understand, don't like, and really miss about the U.S. I expect those things now, have learned to live with the twinge that accompanies hearing about something I've missed, the pang of homesickness that comes at odd hours, and can roll my eyes and shrug at the things I'll never understand about Cambodia.

I've come to think of it a bit like a puzzle. Where there was only a blank space, slowly something is taking shape. The pieces are falling into place-- communication, understanding, comfort. As they snap into the frame, the picture of who I am and who I am in Cambodia begins to look less distinct, more intertwined and, ultimately, more exciting. Click.