Re-entry shock

For people who live in another country or culture for a while and then return home, there's a thing called "re-entry shock."

If you've been gone long enough that you've in any way adapted to another culture and/or language, then you've begun to think different or operate differently. Thus, returning home is actually going through culture shock all over again, but it's more unsettling because it's your home where you're supposed to feel most comfortable.

When we took classes to prepare us for living overseas, we of course studied culture shock and re-entry shock. However, everyone experiences different discomforts, so the class was mostly about generalities. So, even though you think you're prepared for the discomforts, you're still "shocked" about the specific things that bother you.

You can't prepare for surprise.

Last year, we went home for Christmas for several weeks. We had only been gone about a year, so we didn't think returning to the United States would involve any discomforts. All we could think about was what we had missed over the past year: chiles rellenos, live TV, English radio stations, buffalo wings, Starbucks coffee that doesn't cost $10, moms' homecooking, our cat and, oh yeah, our families.

What could there be that would shock us?

Our insurance coverage for living overseas doesn't include dental. So we hadn't had a cleaning in over a year. Being that we work for a nonprofit, we also don't have much extra spending money for things like cleanings, since we spent most of it on our plane tickets to go home. When we heard on the radio that a local dental care center would offer free services to anyone in the community between 8 a.m. and noon one day, it seemed like a great idea to take advantage of this.

We got up at 6 a.m., groggily threw on some clothes, ate a couple of granola bars and drove in the pre-dawn light across town to the clinic, thinking we could beat the crowd. As my husband eased our borrowed car into the parking lot, we were dismayed to see a line of people wrapped around three sides of the building.

I am not a morning person. Neither is my husband. We stood in frozen silence, trying not to let our teeth chatter too loudly, leaning close to one another for warmth as we joined the back of the line.

Apparently, everyone else in line were morning people.

All around us, people were talking up a storm, and doing it loudly. From every side, it seemed, we were bombarded with inane conversation. Each person seemed to feel it necessary to vocalize the stream-of-consciousness thoughts in their heads. Some turned to face behind them in the line, hoping to engage the next person in conversation about the cold, the line, whether the nearest gas station had good coffee, the cold and the line.

As more people streamed through the parking lot to join the lengthening queue, they had to ask the same questions that the people in front of them had asked when THEY joined the line: How long had we been here? When would they open the doors to the clinic? Do you think everyone will be served or is there a cutoff? I heard they only take the first 100 people. How many people do you think are in line already?

I was ready to slap someone. It felt like my brain was going to explode. I couldn't shut out the voices and what they were saying. No matter how hard I tried to drift off into my own thoughts, the bombardment of conversation seemed to batter my head.

Suddenly, I realized something. For a year, I'd been surrounded by people in every public place who were speaking German and Swiss-German. Sometimes they spoke French; occasionally it was Italian. Even the random Arabic or Ukrainian. And there had been something blissfully peaceful about not being able to understand any of these languages. It meant that on a train, a subway car, a sidewalk, a grocery line, at a restaurant table, or strolling around a tourism site, the voices around me had been nothing more than a background buzz, leaving me plenty of space for my own meandering thoughts.

For a year, I'd experienced the peace and quiet of my own inner world because I couldn't understand the conversations around me. And now, I no longer had the ability to tune out other conversations.  It was like I was Supergirl; I had super-hearing and could hear every one of the 500,000 people in the city. My brain seemed to latch onto every English word spoken within a 10-mile radius.

My husband was having the same experience. No matter how enticing was the thought of free dental care, after only 30 minutes we looked at one another and non-verbally agreed it was time to get the heck out of here. We couldn't take it. One more year with dirty teeth was worth it to get away from all the voices butting up against our heads.

This is re-entry shock. You don't know what it'll be. You can't prepare yourself. It'll shock you.