When you are 3500 miles away from home

Maybe this is yet another reason why I shouldn’t drink for days in a row and eat crap food while abstaining from exercise—no good comes of it. My body feels like shit, my skin looks like shit, and I am acting like an emotional basketcase. Or maybe, I am going through the tell tale signs of culture shock: at first an enamoration with a culture and an excitement to become part of it, then frustration how it is nothing like the one you know-- the culture that is ingrained into your identity. No matter how hard I try to deny, I am confronted with my own “Americaness”. Despite my internal and external protests, acting like I am “above” this basic human emotion that desires comfort and understanding, I think I am a bit homesick right now.

That and I am a stereotypical New Yorker abroad—wait, you mean there isn’t a twenty-four hour Korean deli, a nice Chinese woman to do my laundry, my Burberry scarf isn’t the height of fashion, and cell phone usage is expensive here?! What the fuck?!

But the weird thing is, I know deep down there isn’t anything for me to be homesick for in NYC. My life was stagnant there—friendships changing with the introduction of the significant other/probable life partners, a job that I didn’t want any part of, the ending of a lease to an apartment that I hated, and a family that although I love them, I really should be cutting a few of those metaphorical apron strings as I grow into the person I know is here somewhere.

I guess you could say that I am people-sick. I miss the friendships of the people who made NYC for me—my big brother Harald and our squash games, Victor always up for a drink at 4am when the rest of the city is ready to call it a night, having my sister across the park, and Tal enabling my Tasti-D obsession as we walked along the Hudson River psycho-analyzing ourselves. Plus the few others who I newly discovered in the last months of my living there.

Instead I am now navigating the Fresher’s week chaos and hoping for some meaning to emerge. But that is the problem of graduate school. It’s transient—especially as an American abroad. Part of me wants to freely grab onto people for the wrong reasons because the friendship is serving a purpose of entertainment—wait, you like to get fucked up too!? Awesome!—and then the other part of me knows that it isn’t satisfying. I crave the interesting and fucked-up, the mind-fucks of the world who can blow my reality and make me question my assumptions, and help me make sense of life.

Because that is exactly what Fresher’s week is, human chaos. It’s like the promise of the tag-line of Real World, “What happens when you put people together and they stop being polite and start acting real” but with the same dedication to “reality”. Everyone is polite, everyone is on their best behavior, while I sit in my room craving more. Knowing full well that I had that “more” because I invested years of friendships with people back in NYC. So, what am I to do here? Throw myself into a relationship in the hopes of expediting the intimacy that I thrive upon?

Or in this case, when sex isn’t available there is the friendship that results from sharing the bottom of the glass. Often times, drink lulling me into this feeling of intimacy of finding new besties--”sometimes I just look around and I am so bored, you know?”

No, actually they don’t know. But drink number seven tells me that they understand.

I don’t like myself when I drink. Rather let me rephrase it, I love myself when I drink but hate myself in the morning. The problem being during these “Fresher’s Weeks”, there is nothing to do, no pre-established common interest, so you drink until you find one—or alienate everyone in the process.

It’s like, I feel like at nearly twenty-five I am too old to be playing the transient friendship game. Have you ever taken a step back and watched people interacting who’ve met each other for the first time? Whether or not we want to admit it, we seek out our own—in terms of attraction, personality, and cultural get-its. Like, with a fellow Jew abroad it is perfectly acceptable (and comfortable) to poke fun at the stereotypes of my people but since the college had my induction on yom kippur it’s anti-semetic, you know?

So that brings us to the question: am I lonely? I’m surrounded by people all the time. I’m always out, usually drunk by 11pm with a whole group, many of whom laugh at my jokes and self-deprecating humor. There is always something to do—well, unless alcohol isn’t involved and then, well, you’re shit out of luck. And, to be perfectly honest, having people “understand” me after I’ve consumed a few pints is hardly the friendships that I am after. I know I am not alone in this. I see all of the girls carrying cell phones texting their boyfriends back home, trying hard to make a transatlantic romance work. I’ve taken a step back and watched how everyone is socially awkward in these situations—all of us petrified of the silent look that occurs when a conversation falls flat. Everyone doing the double take at lunch trying to see which group will motion at the empty seat.

It’s like I say that I crave more than the superficial, “So what’s your name, where are you from, Which college do you attend” but then I pull my eight hour drinking marathon and only present the funny outrageous party girl. I need to cut this bullshit out but it’s just so fucking difficult. I mean, the basement of the college bar is only so interesting for the seventeenth time in a week when you are sober. It’s this catch-22 of when you are in a new situation, away from home, trying to find your place. And if you can’t remember someone’s name, college, and the town they group up in, how on earth are you going to be able to find out their philosophy on life?

And of course this post is inspired by last nights events. The result of standing around the college bar, pounding back £2 glasses of wine, only to have our boredom lead us to another bar—but this time with more expensive drinks. I should be heading over to the gym to run, but after smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes and consuming so much booze that I am afraid to look in my wallet, I decided to write this post instead.

That is the problem of not being anonymous with this blog. The last thing I want are the worried phone calls/emails asking me if everything is ok. The frustrating thing, it is ok. It’s something that we all have to navigate, there really is no escape. Ok, fine, so maybe I should cut back on the drinking, but, I still want to be social, you know?