PTPD (Post Traumatic Packing Disorder)

In a few months my husband and I will be moving overseas to work with TCKs and we are so excited, but we will only be taking a few suitcases each and as I look around my house I see all the things we will either put into storage, sell, or try and fit into some zippered up bags.

The last time we moved I literally hid from the packing process, and it wasn't even me who had to pack it up. Movers and boxes were coming and I ran away to camp, came home and sat outside with a muffin. Then I closed myself in a room trying to avoid the sound of packing tape and smell of cardboard. I can tell you that my husband was not impressed to say the least.

I have talked a little bit before about the loss we sustain as TCKs in our cultural adjustments but let me focus in on the idea of moving.

I'm the only one with red hair, in case you didn't recognize me

In this picture I am in fifth grade. By this time (about eleven years old) I have moved seven or eight times, I have said goodbye to four different best friends from four different places, and it will be just the beginning because this picture was taken in my first year of boarding school. Which means that from that year until graduation I will pack up my things at the end of every year and head to some form of "home" and then head back to another form of "home" again. Packing, packing, packing. It means a lot of leaving.

This move will bring me to a wonderful total of 26 moves in 26 years. Some years I lived more out of suitcases than others, but the point is this: I know how to move, but the baggage (pun intended) that moving brings with it is loss after loss after loss. Each one brings its own goodbyes and tacks on the new goodbyes I will carry on with me. It is no coincidence that the background of this blog is suitcases. Wanderers carry with them their belongings and their memories and their losses. They carry their hopes and friendships that they may have left behind. I carry that opportunity to dance ballet that I left in Pennsylvania, the loss of two friends who had lockers adjacent to me for years that I do not know if I will run into ever again, the closeness to extended family that I can't sustain from so far away no matter how much I wish to.

It isn't just about leaving those great shoes you love that don't fit in your bag (at least not without breaking the zipper), but it brings up all those other things you have left behind that will never be the same. I am going to call it Post Traumatic Packing Disorder (PTPD), that sinking pit in your stomach when you have to pull the luggage out of your closet, that shrinking back when you hear packing tape unroll, that anxiety that rises up when you look at the boxes and then to all your books.

So let's remember that while going may be exciting, leaving can be excruciating. PTPD means proceed with care and mercy. Packing packs with it all those other things you have left behind. Take the time to say good good-byes and to leave in a healthy way. And remember me as I trudge forward thinking about the loss and packing I will be trying to survive in a few months.

How do you feel when you pack?

TCK Relationships Part 3 (Attachments and Detachments)

I sit there reading her update and I feel it rising in me. I must go to be there. I need to support my friend. It is far, and may be expensive, but I feel like it is so important.

This is my response to a lot of things that happen with my friends and it baffles some people. A friend graduating on the other side of the country. A wedding miles away, a baby shower barely in driving distance, a passing comment to come visit, and my mind is thinking how to fit it all in. The friendships seem to overshadow responsibility. 

Then there are other times when I can't bring myself to answer an email or a text. Where I don't want to leave the house or see a friendly face. Where it all seems like too much effort, and to what end?

I know I am not the only person to do this. This piggy-backs off of the last post on loss, but with a twist. The twist comes in the form of that alternative wretched question, "yes, but where do you call home?"

There are warring concepts in a TCK life that result in this seemingly bi-polar attachment. I think it is why I can cling to a TV show for a month and then abandon it all together out of nowhere. The loss is so real. We have a habit of letting go of things, of people. We feel worn out from that constant attachment and detachment. But then, home is not a place to us. It is people we have met. It is the person who sat next to us when we found out our grandmother died a world away, the person who sat through that rough class and shared notes, the person who borrowed clothes and never gave them back, the person who saw us cry. 

We attach and attach and attach because we have to and long to and love to, and then we let go and let go and let go because we also have to. 

We flourish in new environments and with new people, but we always have in the back of our minds how we will inevitably let them go as well. 

It's why we feel we must fly across the world to be at a wedding, but are afraid to answer the phone. It is why we offer up as much of ourselves as we can spare at a moment's notice, but hide in our rooms when the time to give ourselves up arises. 

It is why the simple act of coffee is both wonderful and terrifying. Hold on, let go. Feel at home, lose your home. Have your friends, lose your friends. Feel loved, feel loss. They go so tightly hand in hand that we cannot separate the fingers but must navigate the paradox of up and downs that each one brings with it. 

Where do you run in and where do you run away?

TCK Relationships Part 2 (Walls)

I've been avoiding writing this post. I am quite aware that no one is making me write it, but also so aware at how important it is to know and recognize this topic.

One reason I have been avoiding it is because it is hard to explain. While we just talked about the gung-ho, jump-in personalities of TCKs there comes a time where this comes to a sudden and very firm halt. Maybe you are enjoying a fantastic friendship when suddenly the TCK becomes distant. Maybe you are in a relationship and out of nowhere the TCK starts pulling away. Where a TCK had jumped into deep topics suddenly a deep friendship has come to a standstill and suddenly you find yourself standing at a very tall wall.

Let me first say that there is a reason (though not an excuse) for these walls. The life of a TCK, while being very rich and wonderful, is also a life of huge loss. The cycle of constantly making and then losing friendships, the hellos and goodbyes do a number on the heart and eventually a TCK will come to a point where it seems easier not to let someone in than it is to go through that feeling of loss again. That is the second reason I have avoided this. I love to champion the wonders of being a TCK but there are also struggles.

A lot of you who have been reading expressed that the concept of how hard it is to maintain a long-lasting friendship resonated with you. Can I tell you why? It is because you are more used to saying "goodbye" than you are to saying "hello, again". In our lives "hello" usually leads to inevitable and often sudden "goodbye".

If you were to read through my journals (please don't, but if you were) you would find this type of thing occurring over and over; something like: It will just hurt too much or I can't do this to them, I know I am going to put up a wall so I won't hurt them when I leave, so I will start to detach now. It will just be easier.
Hint: it never is. That early detachment does more hurt than a final goodbye with all the pain ever would.

But it isn't just when leaving. I wait for people to get sick of hanging out with me and am prepared to move on to another friendship at a moment's notice. In my marriage there has been a strange complexity between being so excited to have someone who will be there with me forever, and also that urge to put up walls just in case it is too good to be true. 5 years in I still fight it.

So, here I want to do two things.

First, I want to tell you that it is okay to feel that loss. You have had your heart broken again and again. I have too. You have had to say goodbye too soon, or too late, or from too far away, or from too near. You have had to let go of things you were holding tightly to. You have been hurt. You have been pulled away. You have lost things you cannot replace. You have felt deep, deep pain, and that is okay to feel. Let yourself grieve.

Second, I want to tell you that you are doing more harm than good. Every time you go cold inside, (you know what I am talking about, the empty, dead feeling you take on) you are not helping yourself. You are making things worse, you are making more pain, and you are hurting those around you. The walls are instinctual to protect, but deep friendships and deep connections are not something you need to protect yourself from. The pain at the end is deep, but the lasting pain of missed connection and love, that is far more destructive. It will take time and practice. It will take many "mind over matter" moments, where you simply decide to feel, where you decide to connect, even when you feel like turning off. It will take many moments where you must be honest with the people around you, where you must give people permission to pursue you when you shut down, permission to scale those walls. And it will take letting wise people give you direction. I do not claim to be one of those wise people, but I will pass on words from someone who is.

When a very close friend of mine was leaving our community in Egypt, I felt myself shutting off. Her mom was there to help her pack up and move back home and one night she pulled me aside and told me how glad she was that her daughter and I were friends. I smiled. But then she told me this:
"Don't you dare pull away from her. Don't you dare. You are too good of friends and it would hurt her too much if you did."

That admonishment has stuck with me. I thought I would save myself but I knew it would do irreparable damage if I did. So I didn't. And let's all just give a short applause to technology which allows us to keep meaningful friendships from far away so much easier than we used to. I have a little whatsapp group of girls who are spread across the world but who I can share my heart with in an instant, and that friend is one of them.

So take a sledge hammer to those walls. Let some people in. Schedule coffee dates, skype dates, cupcake dates, whatever you can. Send a long email. Give a long hug. Share your true heart. Then keep doing that.

And you who have reached a wall with a TCK, please know that it is not because of you. There is a lot of hurt there. Please, be understanding and patient.

When have you struggled with putting up walls? When have you encountered a wall with someone else?

TCK Relationships Part 1-ish

When it comes to relationships and TCKs I have about a million things to say. Things about interactions, about culture, about digging deep quickly, about letting go too soon, about the wealth, about the shallowness. I want to say them all at once, but I know I can't.

So let's consider this Part One. Is that okay? Can we talk about this for a while? I feel like it is the most important and complicated part of being a TCK. But I want to dig into it. It is really where my passion lies. Let's talk about depth.

I'll begin with the pub in the Great White North - Canada. The dim lights, the loud, boisterous crowd, the familiar faces relocated to an unfamiliar place. Across from me is my old dorm brother who is peeling his paper coaster, wadding up the pieces, and tossing them toward my unguarded water. The act is familiar and in some senses sacred. It is an ancient tradition unearthed here in this new time and place. Beside me is my old dorm sister, someone who knows me almost as well as I know myself. She periodically leans over and touches my arm as she speaks and the touch reaches my soul. We have no space bubbles between us. I know I have lived too long in a place where to touch someone might be unwelcome because where I would have just passed it off as mundane, here I am cherishing the familiar. But neither of these moments tells a story so plainly as what will happen next. Next, a person who I only know by association and name will sit beside me and I will ask a deep question in jest and, not to my surprise, I will receive a serious and genuine answer. It might be the only time I ever talk to this person, but I am a TCK. He is also a TCK. And while we nibble on food and laugh there will also be a genuine exchange of person and experience. Why?

Maybe it is because we feel a need to make this moment worth something. It doesn't matter that I am a female and he is a male. It doesn't matter that both of us are married. That he lived in Africa and I in South America. This is about TCKs making the most of such a short time out of habit and necessity. His wife will point it out to me proudly and I will beam back at her. This is just what we do. Growing up in a place where people are suddenly removed will form this in a TCK. And though I asked the question in a joking form, I still hoped for a genuine answer, something that would make this time worth the time it took. I will not be disappointed. I will see a slice of my own self being formed from his words and I will nod seriously. And then when it is done it will be done. That will be it. A night of familiarity with TCKs and their spouses where a bond is formed across a long table and a short night. It is burned into my soul and I cherish the singularity of such a genuine, isolated moment.

Meanwhile, tonight, I sat in a group of incredible people (only one other is a TCK) who have somehow forged a space where this genuineness is being grown. It has taken time, and uncomfortable silences. So many uncomfortable silences. It has taken small talk. I cringe. I hate small talk. But it was necessary and I am slowly bringing myself to that realization. It has taken safe spaces and random events where we all just do something together, along side each other, something non-threatening. But tonight I find myself asking deep questions, not jokingly, and soaking up every moment of it. I feel I can answer with the things I have wanted to answer with for a while, but unsure of how it would be taken. We are working our ways into each others lives and I love it. But it has taken time, time that I don't always feel like we have enough of.

I won't talk about walls, yet. There is a serious place for talking about the depth that a TCK is willing to get to and where that depth comes to a sudden and very hard halt. We can talk about that next, I guess.

Here I want to acknowledge the TCK who will answer honestly if given the space, if asked the question. I want to encourage the person who is awkwardly wading through small talk wondering whether it will be worth it in the end. It will. Give it time. I want to sympathize with all the TCKs who stepped out of their TCK environment and into muddy water, accidentally bearing their soul and making an attachment they didn't mean to. You know what I mean. That moment when someone thinks you like them more than you do because you told them something meaningful, when really, you tell everyone something meaningful. It is okay. You will learn to bide your time. To shut your mouth and listen and watch. You will dive into relationships and fail. You will dive into relationships and flourish. You will hear someone call you their closest friend when you least expect it and then realize that you are right where you should be.

And then, when you least expect to, one day you will tear down one of your deep, deep walls and you will see some new side of genuine that you didn't know.

And man, all that small talk sure will be worth it.

Where have you been surprised by a genuine response? When have you had to wade through small talk? Was it worth it in the end?

My Barrel

We were getting ready for an event and my friend had found barrels for us to paint as part of the decor. They were dirty and dented and rusty and I almost broke into tears. I hadn't thought of it in years, but when it hit it was like an earthquake and not those little tremors we knew in Quito in the every day life. Like the earthquakes that knock things off your shelf and make you realize how very small and at the will of the earth you are.

I pictured mine, with its ridged metal sides and spray-painted letters that had been taped over with paper and more letters. Its rusted lid and metal hinged circle that I had to fight closed skillfully avoiding rusty edges because it may have never belonged to my barrel in the first place. I picture the way, twice a year, that I would have to dip over its edge to put in or pull out the pieces of my life.

Not my actual barrel but close

When I first got my barrel I was in fifth grade and had to climb in because I was too small to bend over and reach things at the bottom. My last year, a senior, I emptied it for the last time, bent over, pulling out the accumulated life I had built for myself in this place.

In so many ways my barrel can be a symbol for my life. We were legacies, like the barrel that was handed from family to family, each name being substituted for the next, painted on next to its last owners, or papered over so if you pulled back the tape you could see the history, passed down out of necessity but with pride. It was where I packed up my life each year to head home from boarding school. It stayed, stored away, like my personality in many ways, in that dark room until we all trudged out of the busy airport and up the tiled stairs into our whitewashed rooms where our barrels waited to spill out our next journey.

I just read a blog post by Marilyn on Communicating Across Boundaries that made me think of my barrel again. I have no clue what happened to it since the dorm has been converted into classrooms. Maybe it was thrown out with our closets that held our etched names and stories within it. Maybe it was hidden away with the identity of the building. "What do you mean, the 'AA Dorm'? Oh, that building- That was a dorm?"

A barrel is such a little and meaningless thing, and yet it holds such a huge value in my memories. It's a hard thing to explain to people. I've tried a million times to help my husband hold a metal barrel in the same regard that I do (hint: it doesn't work, a barrel is still a barrel to him). But to me it will stand in as my pseudo roots in a place where I lived and grew and was shaped for so much of my transitory life.

What items do you have that hold no real value except to your heart and memories?

The Life Experience Paradox

We were dressed for a night out and standing in line outside a club in the cool air. I had never really been to a club and wasn't all that sure what to expect. I knew it wouldn't be like the clubs on the beach in Ecuador, pumping reggaeton that pulsed through the open air dance floors. I could imagine only what I had cooked up between what my friends had said and what I had seen on movies.

Finally, we were at the door presenting IDs. I pulled out my passport and pointed at my date of birth.

"I'm sorry, but California does not recognize a passport as a valid US ID," the young lady at the podium yelled to me as politely as she could over the music.

"What? What do you mean you don't recognize a passport?" I replied.

"Do you have a driver's license or a state ID?"

"No."

We had to leave but my friends hid their disappointment fairly well. We all had questions. I was asking how could they not recognize an ID that was issued by the US government and valid all over the world as a valid ID? But my college friends', however, were asking how does she not have a driver's license yet if she is 19 years old? 

My husband asked me to write a blog post on this because it is such a common thing that a lot of people don't recognize is going on. A TCK may have endless experience navigating through airports into countless foreign countries, but not know how to drive a car until they are 20 years old. A TCK may have been doing their own laundry or buying groceries since they were young but does not know how to open a bank account. How is it that someone who can haggle a price down in several languages not know how to write a check? How can someone who has had a passport their whole life not have a driver's license?

Meanwhile, a TCK is looking at the world and wondering other things. How do people know you are who you say you are if you don't have a passport? Is independence based on having a car or on international survival skills? Is knowing how to write a check more important than knowing how to haggle for the price you want?

And when it comes to job experience, often TCKs are not allowed to work in the country they grew up in, although they feel they possess incredible life experience. That life experience will not necessarily show up on a resume.

It is a strange paradox. Signs of maturity or rights of passage are so different between the two worlds and often collide or crash in the strangest situations. This is where the importance of developmental years plays a huge part in a TCKs life. There are certain steps that are normal in adolescence that TCKs don't often have the opportunity to take. Adolescence is when you are weighing and testing the societal rules. But if the societal rules are always changing around you then you are not afforded this opportunity. And on top of that, some of the normal activities of adolescence can be limited because of security or the agencies that have brought a family to a country.

Maintaining long term friendships is a hard thing for me. I was not given many chances to do so, and was afraid to many times because all the previous times those people had been taken away from me. My husband, on the other hand, is great at long term friendships because the friends he has are the ones that grew up with him in his home town. HIS WHOLE LIFE. I can't even wrap my brain around someone who was around for my whole life, aside from my brothers, maybe. He can look at a friendship for a long run. I look at friendships for the moment. You can imagine how I have had to play catch-up on this subject in our marriage.

It's a strange thing, but mostly just something to be aware of. A TCK may be exponentially mature in some things, and seriously lacking in others. The technical term is delayed adolescence, but I try not to use that term because it makes me feel like there is an inferiority. That is not the case at all. Imagine that there is a bar graph of all the subjects you mature in during your life. A TCK might have some subjects that have jumped far above the expected place for their peers, but others that are far below it. Their non-TCK peers may be going through the steps of adolescence on schedule, but next to a TCK will seem below on some subjects, and above on others.

Both sides are based on opportunity. Different opportunities create different outcomes. Having one or the other does not make you better or worse; but it can be sensitive. It was hard on me to have to explain that I didn't know how to do certain things simply because I didn't have the opportunity, things that were so commonplace amongst my peers. I felt I was extremely mature in some things, but seriously lacking in others.

It feels like you are a living paradox. The truth is, delayed adolescence doesn't doom a TCK to never mature in those subjects. It just means the maturing is delayed. The same is true for non-TCKs, they will mature in the other subjects over time. Our graphs are always fluctuating.

I feel like it always comes back to this idea: different is not better or worse. Everyone has a story to tell and every story is worth telling.

Those are concepts worth living by whether you are a TCK or not.

In what ways have you lived out this paradox of maturity in some subjects but not others? When have you been the rookie at life and when have you been the expert?

So what?

I have been trying to write this post in my head and in drafts for months now. In my mind I keep coming back to this place of "So what?" This Christmas I found myself talking about my blog but somehow unable to put into words the importance of it to me, why writing about TCKs is so engrained into my life. I couldn't even explain exactly how I am a TCK. And for each moment that passed with my extended family where I pretended it wasn't a very big deal I felt less and less myself.

Trying to blend in

I sat in a very precarious yet familiar moment when one family member mentioned that the city my extended family lives in was my home. I think I missed the original comment but I walked right into the moment and knew what was happening in an instant. My mom and an aunt who reads this blog were explaining something I found myself unable to explain to my family this Christmas.

But let me try and explain it here, now. It matters if you are a TCK. It isn't just a name or a box, a label to wear on your sleeve. It is something that was woven deep inside you. It shapes the way that you see the world, the way you speak and think. It may mean that you have so many homes and yet don't know which one is home. And it may mean that on the outside you are one culture and on the inside you have so many other cultures, but these things are you. You are a TCK.

And to ignore it is to ignore one of the most amazing (yet often difficult) aspects about yourself. 

So if you would just allow me to drag my giant soapbox into your office, your living room, your workplace, wherever you are reading this from. If you would just allow me and help me to hoist myself up on to it and tell you that this idea of TCKs is not a fad. It isn't a joke or a made up name. It isn't an idea that only lives on paper. It isn't new or flashy. But It is rich and valuable, a culture hidden amongst many others, often overlooked or misplaced.

It is hard to explain. It's hard to spell out to those around you and especially to those who think and for all intents and purposes do know you very well, or have known you since you were young. 

I haven't written a post for a while because I got stuck on the "So what?"

So here it is: So what, you are a TCK? So explain it. So live it. So use it. It is you, and you should be allowed to be you, and others should allow you to be you. It might take time and effort and mind-changing, but it will be worth it in the long run. Everyone wants to be known, it is part of the human condition. Give yourself that chance. 

And I will try and give myself that chance too.

What do you think is valuable about being a TCK? How do you explain it to those around you?