One Week

When you go and apply for an exchange program, they talk a lot about how you'll find yourself. But after one week, what's palpable is what I now realize has to happen before the finding: I've lost myself. Back home I had a whole established identity; here I am essentially dependent on my host family. The independence I so prided myself on is gone. The language I used to express myself is gone. All the people I have ever known are on another continent. I feel a little bit like I was born last Wednesday.

It's frightening, in a sneaky way. I don't feel scared or nervous anymore. But already I have moments of awareness where I realize that already the pattern of my thoughts is different, that I don't sound like myself in my head. When you lose all context, you have an incredibly strange moment where you're forced to confront what's left. And now I see that so much of who I was was only just context. That's freeing, but also daunting.

Things have happened outside of my soul searching and I'll write about them soon!