Dysphoria

The rat race

After eight weeks of being back in the United States of America, I can no longer call myself as someone who is still settling in. In fact, I never could use that excuse in Ann Arbor. I was here long before I learnt how to live here. That is perhaps the majority of problem. My expectation of it being radically different after 4 years would have been asking for too much. But the similarity of maze and blue is making go blue and black.

I had always wondered why my writing was drastically sadder here in Michigan compared to Ludwigsburg. I attributed it to my lonely Saturday evenings and Michigan weather but that was only half the truth. The other half is becoming apparent now that I am back. This country’s vast spaces lead to an emptiness of a sort. The language of communication is English but that has ironically reduced my reading and put me back on a diet of American TV and sports that I had managed to get over. I go running searching for open spaces but I have to handle miles of pavement before I get to it. When my wife and I evaluated travel options the sheer distances made me feel locked in.

The people are in the state of dazed friendliness. The cold Germans spurned my optimism in my effort to balance the air. But in the US the endless and unfounded optimism around me takes me the other way. I am questioning everything. Except the wave of gloom that shrouds me when I leave work. Between exciting times and comforting evenings with my wife dearest, I am failing to find substance. Have I stopped growing again, already?

Being a returning expatriate, I have been told to watch out for this. Along with the nostalgia of what an expat leaves behind, he is no longer special at his place of return. I figured I would deal with it fine but I am struggling. My wife’s eyes glitter with the new but that isn’t enough to light my path out of a dark place. I need to find a niche here. Being a German-speaking-beef-eating-beer-loving-Indian in Michigan isn’t enough to set me apart.

Does this mean I am going back to churning out self-loathing pieces? I sure hope not. But on this particularly hard Saturday, gloom and despair seem to fit the bill.

And a realization even this hero need to be sometimes saved.