trapped

I feel… trapped. Imprisoned. My chains? No, not the children. Not even the husband. Religion? Nope. Gender? Not in the west in 2011. So, why? How can I feel trapped? I have a roof over my head, food in my ample belly. Opportunities that women in other countries can only dream of. How can I feel trapped?

I think to myself that I am limited by my bank account, that I want to get on a boat or a train and see the world, I want my only limits to what I can do, to what my family can do, to be our imaginations. I think I want to grab life by the horns and live it to the absolute fullest and if only I had a few million in the bank, I could.

Other days I don’t want that at all, I want nothing more than a big house in the country, surrounded by fields and to spend my days pottering around my large kitchen, or lounging in my library, reading or writing. Having huge holiday celebrations and family reunions and just…living a good, content, full life.

Alas, both options require money. I am not sure why my life in its current state cannot content me. My children are healthy, intelligent, beautiful. My husband is caring and loyal. Even on the days when the cupboard and the fridge is full, there is plenty of money in the bank account, the bills are paid and my hair is clean and shiny, I still feel…unfulfilled. As if something is missing and I can’t work out what it is. A sense of purpose? Perhaps. Security? Independence? Perhaps.

I feel as if I am living constantly in the house of cards my teenage son constructed this summer, stuck at home with a broken leg and a pack of cards I had just handed him. He had never built one before and even the slightest hint of a breath would send it tumbling to the floor. I can’t get that feeling out of my head. Every day I become more certain that I never will. No matter how successful I might ever become, or how much money amasses in my bank account, no matter what great things my children persue in their lives, I fear that I will never escape that feeling of everything tumbling down around me at the slightest hint of a breath. That no matter how many pills I take or counseling I have, I will never feel happy with myself or my life.

I wonder why this is? Is it because I was unhappy as a child? Bullied incessantly at school and disliked at home? Have I become conditioned to feel this way? Certain that any feeling of happiness or pleasure is a sign of a great wind bearing down on my house of cards. Is it because there is some fundamental glitch in my programming?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, only that as I get older (Hello, 30! See you soon!) they become more pressing, more relevant. I wonder if it is perhaps a part of growing up, and that perhaps I will grow out of it, as indeed I grew out of my “I know everything, nobody can tell me what to do, it’s MY life so fuck off” teenage years.

On the bad days, the ones where for whatever reason I have found myself lying in bed at 11am, sobbing uncontrollably, the black hole in my chest absorbing light and life and threatening to consume every ounce of me, I find myself wanting nothing more then to go home.

“I want to go home.” I sob in to my husband’s chest hair, helpless and small and wishing I could melt into him, not understanding why I’m saying it, why my heart is feeling it. There is nothing left for me there. I think if I were to die suddenly I would not want to be returned there, to travel 6000 miles in a box and be buried so far from the people that love me the most, so why do I long to be back there in my darkest days? Perhaps what is calling to me is the desert which I love so much, the free and open spaces where I could never feel trapped or confined, where I could climb a mountain and watch the sunrise over the peaks and cactus. Even standing on the shores of Great Britain, gazing into the Atlantic Ocean, where there is nothing but sea and sky before me, I feel trapped. An island full of unfamiliar people behind me, a vast inhospitable sea before me.

I wonder if I will ever leave this country again, if I will ever leave behind the feeling of being imprisoned and lost within myself.

on life in a foreign country

It’s a funny thing, moving to a foreign country. People get upset if you expect it to be at all like home, you are expected to know everything will be different, accept it and just be happy about it. Enjoy discovering new things. There is, of course, nothing wrong with that. In theory. The problem comes when you step off the plane in a new country and the first thing you see is… McDonalds. Or Starbucks.

For me, as an American, this wasn’t what I expected. I expected things in England to be different. I was totally prepared for things to be different, yet what I quickly discovered is that, actually, they really weren’t. Thanks to globalisation, I could have the same lunch latte in London on Thursday that I had had two days and 6000 miles previously, in Phoenix. The similarities didn’t stop there, I could also buy most of the same brands of clothing and food, shop in the exact same supermarkets, even watch the same tv shows and channels. I can buy a lot of the same food, enjoy many of the same sporting activities and speak the language fluently, with no extra effort at all.

I have been here six years now and know that while things look the same, they arent exactly the same. I know that certain drinks and foods are prepared differently, with different ingredients, or amounts. I know that while many of the food items and brands I know and love from my formative years in the states may be available, in the same or a different form, in grocery stores, chances are restaurants will not have heard of them or added them to their menu. I know a lot of the ins and outs of the culture.

To someone just getting off the plane, expecting adventure and discovering new things, it is disconcerting to find everything the same. To then have to adjust, not to foreign differences, but to foreign sameness is quite difficult. As the days and years pass by and you learn and absorb you eventually start to pity and even mock those newcomers.

But, perhaps we should all remember that it is not necessarily ignorance or arrogance that defines foreign visitors who don’t seem to accept that they are in a foregin country and things will be different. Perhaps it is a genuine confusion over what is actually different, and trying to reconcile that with what is the same. This is no easy task and instead of anger or surprise- natives and long term foreign residents should try their best to guide newcomers, help them find the differences that they will cherish and be thankful for.