Not in Kansas anymore.
I fell oddly and severely ill on Friday, en route to class. I thought at first it was just motion sickness - something I am more than a little prone to, and likely given that my travel involves cramming myself into the hot, stuffy sardinian confines of the Mexico City MetroBus. However, by the time I was sitting on the stairs outside the office waiting for my students to arrive, it had become quite clear that this was no ordinary queasiness: I was faint and severely dizzy, swallowing back assumedly-related waves of nausea, and sweating so badly that my clothes were soaked through.
No, not pregnant. I know you're thinking it. I'm not, I promise.
By the time I had canceled class and staggered to the curb, I had determined two things: one, that I needed to lie down very very badly and very very soon; and two, that I had absolutely no idea how to make this happen.
It was one of the single most terrifying experiences of my life. I am not particularly afraid of this city despite its foreignness but, struggling against the fear that something bad might or might not have been taking place in my central nervous system, the city was suddenly a snapping, snarling black forest in which I had completely and utterly lost my path. I was perfectly aware of the MetroBus nearby and the microbuses just up the street and the hundred pesos in my wallet that would have sufficed for a taxi, but the dizzy nausea not only affected my ability to see and walk, it directly impeded with my ability to think. I could not for the life of me figure out how to get home. I tried to make a decision but the options seemed unfriendly and insurmountable.
And so, helpless, scared and emotionally six, I sat down against the wall of a store, pulled my knees up to my chin, and started to cry. I don't know how long I was there - several minutes at least. When a strange older man finally stopped and asked me if I was okay, I looked up at him blindly and said, "No."
And this strange older man did what any kindly soul would do. He asked me what was wrong, what I needed, offered to get me some water. He provided options - a doctor up the street, a coffee shop around the corner, hailing me a taxi - before realizing that I was incapable of making decisions and thus made them for me. He walked me to the corner, waved down a taxi, and told the driver where to take me. He even offered me money for the cab, which thankfully I was coherent enough to refuse (few people in this city can really afford to give $100 away, despite the number of people who will leap to action if they deem you in need). He gave me his office number on a slip of newspaper in case I needed anything.
I slept for the next 24 hours almost solidly, save one vaguely panicked phone call to my mother for assurance that I was not, in fact, dying.
If big cities are unfriendly, then one would suppose this monumental megalopolis would be a seething pit of inhumanity but of course that's not true. What struck me more was how blindingly foreign everything seemed the moment I was no longer capable of blazing forward with blind and enthusiastic abandon. I wonder: would the same fear have existed had this happened to me in Edmonton, or in Toronto? Was the problem my dizziness, the language and cultural differences, or something even more deeply ingrained?
I do believe one of the reasons that I am so intensely fulfilled when I am living in a foreign country is that I have deep inside me a profound sense of not belonging anywhere. I suffer from what Douglas Coupland calls "cultural aping" - the need to be taken as local regardless of where I am; I don't so much want to be a citizen of the world as much as I want to be a citizen of every single city in the world.
Mexico is a relief from this because there is simply no way I am ever going to be taken as local, even where I to live out the next fifty years on these streets. Wandering through a street market on Sunday, my girlfriends laughed delightedly at how difficult it would be to lose me with red hair gleaming several inches higher than all those dark brown coifs. But old happens do die hard so, when people ask me where I'm from, my answer is always, "Canada but I live here now." It's low-pressure belonging, though: I can belong and not belong at once, harmonically.
But the truth is I don't belong here, not in any deep emotional sense at least. I am so happy to be here and to be living this adventure but I do feel the strain of being so completely out of my element whenever something happens - a heartbreak, an illness, a bout of loneliness - that renders me emotionally vulnerable. Then and only then do I feel homesick, not for Canada per se but for a place where everything is just a little bit more familiar.
It, and the dizziness, passes after 24 hours' sleep and a good long hot shower, though.
No, not pregnant. I know you're thinking it. I'm not, I promise.
By the time I had canceled class and staggered to the curb, I had determined two things: one, that I needed to lie down very very badly and very very soon; and two, that I had absolutely no idea how to make this happen.
It was one of the single most terrifying experiences of my life. I am not particularly afraid of this city despite its foreignness but, struggling against the fear that something bad might or might not have been taking place in my central nervous system, the city was suddenly a snapping, snarling black forest in which I had completely and utterly lost my path. I was perfectly aware of the MetroBus nearby and the microbuses just up the street and the hundred pesos in my wallet that would have sufficed for a taxi, but the dizzy nausea not only affected my ability to see and walk, it directly impeded with my ability to think. I could not for the life of me figure out how to get home. I tried to make a decision but the options seemed unfriendly and insurmountable.
And so, helpless, scared and emotionally six, I sat down against the wall of a store, pulled my knees up to my chin, and started to cry. I don't know how long I was there - several minutes at least. When a strange older man finally stopped and asked me if I was okay, I looked up at him blindly and said, "No."
And this strange older man did what any kindly soul would do. He asked me what was wrong, what I needed, offered to get me some water. He provided options - a doctor up the street, a coffee shop around the corner, hailing me a taxi - before realizing that I was incapable of making decisions and thus made them for me. He walked me to the corner, waved down a taxi, and told the driver where to take me. He even offered me money for the cab, which thankfully I was coherent enough to refuse (few people in this city can really afford to give $100 away, despite the number of people who will leap to action if they deem you in need). He gave me his office number on a slip of newspaper in case I needed anything.
I slept for the next 24 hours almost solidly, save one vaguely panicked phone call to my mother for assurance that I was not, in fact, dying.
If big cities are unfriendly, then one would suppose this monumental megalopolis would be a seething pit of inhumanity but of course that's not true. What struck me more was how blindingly foreign everything seemed the moment I was no longer capable of blazing forward with blind and enthusiastic abandon. I wonder: would the same fear have existed had this happened to me in Edmonton, or in Toronto? Was the problem my dizziness, the language and cultural differences, or something even more deeply ingrained?
I do believe one of the reasons that I am so intensely fulfilled when I am living in a foreign country is that I have deep inside me a profound sense of not belonging anywhere. I suffer from what Douglas Coupland calls "cultural aping" - the need to be taken as local regardless of where I am; I don't so much want to be a citizen of the world as much as I want to be a citizen of every single city in the world.
Mexico is a relief from this because there is simply no way I am ever going to be taken as local, even where I to live out the next fifty years on these streets. Wandering through a street market on Sunday, my girlfriends laughed delightedly at how difficult it would be to lose me with red hair gleaming several inches higher than all those dark brown coifs. But old happens do die hard so, when people ask me where I'm from, my answer is always, "Canada but I live here now." It's low-pressure belonging, though: I can belong and not belong at once, harmonically.
But the truth is I don't belong here, not in any deep emotional sense at least. I am so happy to be here and to be living this adventure but I do feel the strain of being so completely out of my element whenever something happens - a heartbreak, an illness, a bout of loneliness - that renders me emotionally vulnerable. Then and only then do I feel homesick, not for Canada per se but for a place where everything is just a little bit more familiar.
It, and the dizziness, passes after 24 hours' sleep and a good long hot shower, though.
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