Finding myself... culturally homeless.
 

I found myself in Wikipedia.

Third Culture Kid
These are the parts that specifically apply to me:

Third Culture Kid - Identity

I am one of the ill-adjusted TCI's. Every now and then I go through feeling sucky about it. This is one of those times. The new thing was finding my situation so well described in Wikipedia. That was somewhat reassuring, and at the same time, really depressing.

I ask two things of anyone wishing to comment:

-- Please refrain from trying to cheer me up about this. I know there are bright sides. Please understand that looking on them is unhelpful.

-- Please do not tell me that "this too shall pass," unless you want me to 1) feel worse and 2) retort that everything passes when we die.

((((((HUGS)))))))
love bizi
we are here for you.

Hi Waves,

I have nothing to offer but support and a little understanding. My negative self esteem and identity issues are directly related to a total lack of love and emotional support during my developmental years, though.

I did spend 1/3 of my first 12 years living in the abnormal fishbowls of small Military Camps abroad, even living off base for a while. At that time it was more integrated with the local community than today. Coming back to this Country after just about 4 years was a Culture Shock, even at that age, so Heaven knows what turmoil you are dealing with.

I simply hope you can reach some sort of peace within yourself.

Dave.

Hi, Waves.

That is crummy.


M

Bizi, Dave, Mari,

Thank you for your support. It sure is crummy, and it is never not crummy. Most of the time, I barely think of it -- I mean I am used to it -- but it surfaces in the most subtle ways. I am perpetually having to "slough it off".

Hmmmm... no wonder I have trouble sloughing off other emotional things... My internal slougher offer is prolly kept busy handling this cultural stuff. ;) There, I make joke about my big sad.

-----------
For those who don't really know my background, I'll summarize. I'd rather not be specific about locations, but it won't be necessary for the big picture.

To date, almost exactly 1/3 of my life has been spent in each of 3 different nations. I am a dual national too, but have always felt like a foreigner in both my countries of citizenship. The only place I neither felt nor was treated like a foreigner was in the US, where, ironically, my politcal status was "legal alien".

It seems I need to talk about this whole pile of crap. I will post more later, otherwise it will be overwhelming... possibly both for me and for you guys.

Dave,

The military household thing certainly does have similar issues to mine. That Wikipedia article even points out how military careers tend to produce TCK's.

There are some differences too. You had the issues of your father's safety, which I did not. You also had frequent moves to brand new places, while I only moved between familiar ones. On the other hand, I believe experienced a much deeper cultural split precisely because of the continued intimacy with both cultures.

But we both did experience that cultural split to some degree, and we both experienced the instability of our home moving or threatening to move. (We only moved back and forth twice, but I kept being told that a permanent "return" was imminent, or that I'd go to boarding school in England soon (didn't btw). Anyway point is I never felt we would stay put, even though we mostly did.)

Being a military brat is hard because we have no mooring beyond our designation.

Belonging, but mostly not belonging.
I understand.
I think one has to find other ways to belong . .. .. maybe not to place, people, . . . .but to something else that is big enough to make the days work.

I could not respond much to your first post because I got very distracted (and I am already in a bad mood so forgive me) by the "we are all going to die sometime." That pretty much cuts off dialogue.

Besides, none of us here is friicking dying. We are living.
. . .living more or less as well as we can with what we are dealt, even as sucky as that is.

M

i don't know if this counts but i felt isolated most if not all of my life except for maybe the first two years. then my father got sick and we had to be good little girls since my father slept during the day. that was for a year. I had to take care of his needs and wasn't taught to take care of my own needs. then at five he started drinking heavily. I had to keep that secret from everyone besides taking care of him when he was drunk by often times having to speak to him on the phone and coax him home so we could pick him up from the office. then i would calm him down at home when my mother used to egg him on. I felt separate from all my classmates. then i went to a private school where there were hardly any Jews.
Most of the kids came from very wealthy backgrounds and were old Yankees.
boy did i feel out of place. I went to a temple where all the girls got dressed up except for me. I didn't identify with any of them. I finally told my big secret to a college roommate who thought i came from a great background where she didn't. My melancholy started when i was five. I used to take care of the kids across the street at five or six and felt comfortable taking care of them rather than playing with my peers.
bobby

Hi waves,

I do believe your feelings of Cultural Split are more deep rooted and personal than those of a Military background. We tend to struggle with the loss of belonging to a geographic Location. I'm English, but am I a Tractorboy, a Yokel, a Southerner, an adoptive Yorkshireman (not yet after 25 years)? Everyone is FROM somewhere, it's one of the first questions asked of a new acquaintance. My answer has always been unsatisfactory and long-winded.

Being from nowhere leaves an empty, nagging hole inside. At least I can identify with my Culture, that has never changed. But as a kid, coming back to this Country - and being unceremoniously dumped at boarding school - I found I was far more aware of different Cultures than my peers, and most came from the Melting Pot that is London.

Do I suggest you do as I do with my childhood issues - bottle them up, let them seethe and simmer under the surface for a few more years until they burst forth again?:D

I do not have anything to offer that is practical.

Dave.

Getting this over with first:
Yep, it does. I thought of that when I typed the condition, and I almost refrained, but couldn't because I really am sick to death :rolleyes: of hearing "this too shall pass". Those words hold no comfort for me whatsoever, hearing them angers me, and I have already heard them past my tolerance. The intended meaning holds no comfort, and instead serves only as an unnecessary reminder of a necessary end.

That said, I am sorry I upset you by preemptively going there. I inadvertently managed to do to you what I wished to avoid having done to me. :rolleyes: :( :hug::hug:

Yes, it is much more nomadic than what I experienced.

I think I do this with intellectual common ground.... which makes it more important for me. Although many intelligent people do need this sort of common ground to some extent, with me, it kind of fills another gap most people don't need to fill.

I belong everywhere, and simultaneously nowhere. I belong to some places more than others, and to some people more than others, but these belongings are all complicatedly enmeshed with one another. I am a cultural hybrid.

When people ask where I am from, it doesn't get so specific as not having a "home town", much less a "family home". I don't have those things. Moreover, I don't have a home country. I will explain this more later; I only have random snippets of time right now.

It counts.
I am sorry for all that you went through with your father.

I had to keep home secrets too, but I was older... 8-9. It was a different type of thing. I am still embarrassed to talk about it even though it was not my fault. I broke down and told a Canadian girl I had befriended, and she used it for emotional blackmail. One of her conditions I remember was that I refrain from befriending another expat girl who had joined our school, whose background was more similar to mine. That all sounds horrible. I am sorry. :(

I was in a small racial minority, and then in a cultural minority within that minority. The "main" minority might been perceived as a powerful minority, but the cultural minority made me not-a-part of it. I didn't understand any of this as a child. I still don't really understand, even in retrospect. All I really got, and still get, is that I was different in obvious ways that made most other kids laugh at me and exclude me from things.

I don't believe it was as bad -- still weird, but not as -- through second grade (age 6). Then my family moved to Europe (here) for a year, and when we returned, I was put back into the same class (4th grade, age 8). The kids acted different to me. Even kids who had been nice to me before I left started being unkind. My mother says they became more aware of parental prejudices. I don't know. Where was she, at the time, anyway. Why couldn't she see it and help me.

I recently lit into my mom about the way she used to talk about 'my friends' in the context of belonging to or doing things with a group (as opposed to one or two others). I was too embarrassed about not having any to try to explain it to her at the time. I took her references to mean that I was 'supposed to' be in a group of friends, and I was embarrassed that I did not.

I told her I always wondered who she thought my friends were. But why wasn't it obvious to her that her daughter didn't belong to any group, much less of friends.

That's a hard list.

The only choice slur I remember from where I grew up was White Honkey. Not that one can be another color honkey, but for some reason they almost always included the color qualifier, at least when shouting it at someone.

I do consider myself an adoptive Floridian. Florida is kind that way... adopts lots of strays with random backgrounds, American and non.

Exactly. Mine also sounds incredibly exotic. It means I can use it as a social "hook" if I want to, but more often than not, I don't want to, and do not really want to "go there" at all. Here, I'm often asked if I am American, and, especially if it is a random stranger asking, I have started just saying yes. It stops the questioning.

London was far less melted back then, too. I know what you mean, though. I am more sensitive to other cultures and other ways of doing things. I sometimes worry about doing things 'right' and try to alter the way I do things a little, in order to respect a cultural context. I started resenting that when I moved back here though... too much to adjust and doing it 24/7/365 is different than doing it at a dinner party.

It's funny about boarding school. By now, I have heard a ton of horror stories about it. But until the time I was about 13, it was promised that I would go to boarding school in England "next year." I very much regarded that as a good thing, and was angry every time it was postponed.

I am relieved I was never sent, as I believe it would have been worse than staying where I was, frying pan to fire. I was idealistic about it, probably because British expats, who formed the majority of my positive social connections did not treat me with suspicion, the way many locals did. I guess this led me to think I would fit right in in England, but growing up I came to realize that was a misconception, and on top of it, that boarding school experiences were often really awful.

That's pretty much what I do, but my valve blows probably more often than every few years. ;):D I think, too, that sometimes social circumstances or an event will trigger a new bout of processing things -- sometimes in a slightly different way, or with greater perspective that leads to a better understanding. So I believe it is ok to do this, and that it can help one to grow.

:hug::hug:
waves

hi waves just wanted to say that it sounds like you are working some things out.
Thank you for sharing.
(((((HUGS)))))
bizi

Not really Bizi.... not yet anyway. ;) This is all old news to me, but I am feeling the weight of it right now.

Thank you for listening. :hug::hug:

I am available to chat if you wish....
bizi

Waves, :heartthrob::Heart::heartthrob:

I am out of words but I am listening if that helps.


M

Thank you, Mari.

It does help. :):heartthrob: