What Is An Expat?

Denver

The bright lights of Denver are shining like diamonds
Like 10,000 jewels in the sky
And it’s nobody’s business
Where you’re going or where you come from
And you’re judged by the look in your eye…

So I’m back home. I just feel so strange. Everything is somehow different. I have a changed perspective on so many things. It’s Christmas season, so many of the stranger aspects are exaggerated. Shopping is king. I look around at all the fat consumerists driving around in the monster SUVs and cringe. I think everyone should go to a poor country for a wakeup call so they appreciate what they have. As Americans, we have so much…stuff. We have so much stuff, that we have stores that sell stuff to help you keep your stuff organized, packed away neat and clean until you need it, or don’t. The size of some of the vehicles on the road is almost intimidating after being only around smaller vehicles. Now obviously, I consider a lot of the ones here in Uzbekistan too small. But in America there are so many big trucks and SUVs on the road, not to mention the big American status cars. I have a Nissan Maxima, which I would class as a good sized vehicle which sits between the two extremes. The land of the Super-size is something to behold. We have so much stuff it’s trivial to waste it. It’s hard to describe the feeling of “everything is somehow different.” How do you quantify that? It makes me feel adrift on the sea of uncertainty.

I apologize for that last bit, it sounds horribly pretentious.

Anyway, so it’s Christmas time as I said, and much folks stop by to spend the holidays. I do some seeing of the friends, but not as much as I had hoped. Several things just sort of fall apart. I guess it works out that way sometimes. I hang out with my friends, but in some ways I still feel alone. I don’t know why. I got a kick out of my brother Roy, who is a world traveler type. I had gotten some CDs earlier, and we were driving somewhere when he goes, “hey, is that Cheb Khaled?” He’d wandered around North Africa at some point, which I had completely forgotten.

Speaking of my car, it was odd to see it again after almost 13 months. Stranger still to drive it. When I got home, I just sat in it for about a half hour, remembering where buttons were, programming the radio, adjusting the seat, and then just sitting there for a while before driving off. It was nice, but so unusual. Something that I had previously done every day entirely without thought was some new and almost unfamiliar task. Over a week later I would realize I had a sunglasses compartment. Sure enough, there was a pair sitting in there, too!

My time schedule never did fully adapt to Colorado. Several days I was awake all night, not tired at all. I spent a good deal of time then messaging the folks “back home” in Uzbekistan. I didn’t sleep much at all. I emailed back and forth with Cher daily. It was nice to have something to look forward to. It made me want to get back to my new life, such as it is. There are so many holes and gaps in it, but I feel drawn away. I simply don’t know where I belong anymore. I wonder if I will be able to simply go back to the states when my goal is reached and re-join the corporate world.

Other than that, it was nice to see the things I had missed, as well as those I had forgotten about. I didn’t get to all of them, but there’s always tomorrow.