Between two selves

Present life often seems more like a child's scribbles than a well-composed narrative.

How long before I'm whole again? When does the feeling of weightlessness lift? When does life cease to feel like a mirage.

This morning I received an email from one of my closest friends (in China) about his new album, including songs we once performed as a duo and in our short-lived band Tarheel. I quickly downloaded it and ran through the tracks. Memories flooded back as if from a past life. Where am I?

Two months ago I wrote this:

I wake up every morning knowing that I'm in Texas, knowing that I'm at my father's home, knowing that ahead of me is a day of activities mostly revolved around getting a job and getting my family into its own quarters. At the same time, I wake up every day as if in a dream, as if I could wake up and still be in Changsha, in my apartment, in my bed, breathing emphysema-inducing pollution, ready to face a new day.
I'm not really here.

Now two months on, not much has really changed. I have new habits (e.g. making coffee daily as opposed to just on the weekends; checking out library books). I have new craft beers. I have new friends (whom I will soon basically leave behind again). I have a new, much less polluted environment.

But I'm still not fully here.

I suppose I would describe it as being two selves. There was the self I knew, the self of my post-university adulthood. That was the China self, the self that had grown confident, capable, comfortable in its own skin. The China self knew its place in the world, or at least thought it did, which is almost one in the same. The China self is the self of my memories.

Then there's the self I'm still trying to get a feel for: the new US self. This is the self that's somewhat uncomfortable, somewhat ill-fitting, and completely unsure. The US self doesn't know its place. The US self has no cache of memories or anecdotes to draw on. There have been both losses and gains, but the US self still doesn't know how to react.

What happened to China? It seems a world away, and it kind of is. It seems a lifetime ago, if it ever happened at all. Perhaps I'm Rip Van Winkle and I've awoken from a decade-long Chinese nap, bewildered by what has changed and what hasn't.

I'm watching cardinals hop around in my backyard. Cardinals are odd to me. They're completely ill-suited to a green environment, yet they persist, they survive, and they even seem to thrive.

Being and becoming, US style

Baijiu in the US: Is it out of place? Is it just who I am now?

Sociologically, social identity is always in the process of being and becoming. Of course there are times of greater change than others. Early childhood and the teenage years come to mind. Right now, I feel that process has ratcheted up in myself.

My social identity had been fairly fixed and settled for years. I was a foreigner in a foreign land. I taught English and was recognized within my Changsha sphere as a good, knowledgeable, hardworking teacher. I did my extracurricular activity. Yes, things changed. i became a husband. That was a big life adjustment, but the change in social identity was fairly straight forward. The same can be said for becoming a father.

But now that social identity is in flux.

I am not a foreigner, but neither am I a local or even a native. Not really, anyway. I go through my days in a bit of a dreamlike state, in half expectation that I'll wake up or turn around and be back in Changsha.

Right now I'm the guy who just came back from China. But how long can I be that? Six months? Nine months? A year? Eventually, I have to be the guy who used to live in China. Even when I transition into that socially, internally I'll still be the guy who wants to get back to Changsha.

How long can my stories start, "When I was in China..." or "In China..." without annoying people? People cognitively understand that I was gone for a decade, but they don't truly understand waht it means socially. They don't really understand that more than a decade of US stories were lost while I gained those China stories. Aside from my high school and college years, I have no US stories to tell, not yet anyway.

Am I that knowledgeable, hardworking teacher I once was? I'm unemployed. I hope that status changes soon, but it is my present reality. I often feel lacking. My active English vocabulary is ridiculously poor. I blame it on a decade of a simplified English environment. I don't know the terms and protocols used in schools today. Without recent US work experience, I find people sometimes don't want to trouble themselves to find out what I can do; they just see that I don't fit the boxes they want to check off.

What am I here? I'm still a husband, though the needs of that role are in flux. I'm still a father, though I oddly end up spending less quality time with my sons now than I did in China. Odd, given that I was working full-time there and I'm not employed here. I was an independent man (as much as one really is "independent", which Americans tend to overestimate), now living off of the generosity of others, living with my parents, and getting Medicaid for my kids.

From stability to instability. From relative consistency to flux. What is my social self now? I don't really know. What will my social self be? That's even less clear? Will I ever be settled again? That's a good question.