Not a Pity Party

I realize that it's been quite some time since I did an actual update of things going on here in Germany. Looking back it's mostly been pictures of nightclubs and my weekend excursions here in Berlin, sorry about that, my mind has been preoccupied so to say.

I have been going through some "expatriatial changes" in the past couple of months that I can't quite decipher if they are bad or good. I am guessing they are neither, and more or less just part of the overall natural change that one goes through in a lifetime. My time here has been turbulent to say the least, bouts of pure joy and then going down to pure depression. Homesickness is really a bitch so to say, and my ability to deal with it has been less than perfect.

I feel as though I could have been stronger and let myself down. I know that I wasn't fully prepared emotionally before I left due to my energy being put into other directions, when I should have been focusing on myself. Arriving, I was unprepared to deal with the stresses and strains of living in another country for a year, overly confident in my abilities and strength as a person. Granted, confidence is not a bad thing, but my stubbornness coupled with confidence usually leaves me totally unprepared for the predictable. My shyness kept me from making more friends, and my loner nature tended to get the best of me. All these factors caused this strange bubble where I blocked out a lot and seemingly floated through my time.

Don't get me wrong, I have had a wonderful time here, but never felt as though I was actually participating in what was going on in front of me. More like a observer in a strange dream that has lasted soon to be twelve months. Never quite awake and conscious, never fully asleep. They say that culture shock happens after the stage of where "everything is new and wonderful" but since I had already been here many times before, I think I skipped that feeling and went right to flatline. I would have to say the effects of culture shock did not fully kick in until recently, when I found myself constantly annoyed and agitated at my world around me, things I normally found endearing now made me want to tear my hair out.

Yes, I know that I am lucky to be here and I am eternally grateful for this experience, but at the same time I am saddened at my psyche's reaction to it and disappointed in myself for not embracing my situation a little more than I should have. I feel selfish and almost undeserving at times for my inward (not outward) reaction to this opportunity and I wish that I could honestly go back in time and start over to when I landed last August. I can't go back in time though, and if I learn anything it's that I know exponentially more things about myself that I could have ever imagined; namely, what I need to be at peace with myself and how to better react to those bumps in the road we all go through many times in our lives. I went over some particularly large bumps that I thought would do me in, but somehow managed to drive on.

I often wonder if I am the only one that has been through this experience, but pretty sure I'm not. I also think that I might be too hard on myself. That may be partly the case but I also know certain basic human reactions are not in my control. This is a constant and common theme in my life - trying to control things I have absolutely no control over. I wonder if there will ever be a day that I am not facing this, but I highly doubt it. I am hoping the next five weeks will be the best that I will have here, except this time instead of floating through them, I hope to be an active participant. As they say in German though, "Mal schauen".

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