The glass wall

There were times when the immense different-ness of Mexico got to me. Continually fighting your long-developed patterns and expectations can be exhausting and, yes, upsetting. I would become exhausted, irritable, snapping at everyone around me for having the audacity to speak Spanish or insist on tortillas with dinner.

Two weeks ago, now safely ensconced in the cultural familiarity of my own country's motherland, I became exhausted, irritable, snapping at everyone around me for having the audacity to analyze their food intake for caloric content or comment on my hair's shrivelled ends.

It took me a few days to put the two experiences together. That I could be experiencing culture shock in a country so very like my own seemed an impossibility to me, yet there it was, clear as day, Erika hits the culture wall like a ton of bricks.

My mother has a saying, paraphrased here as I don't know the exact quote: "Pity they who leave home past the age of twenty, for they shall belong nowhere." My mom relates to this quote as, having met my father in Paris in her early 20s, she moved to Canada at aroundabout 24 and now spends her days wildly contemplating her Scandinavian home with utopian awe. She doesn't feel Canadian, because she is Swedish, yet she knows she would feel anything but Swedish were she to return, having spent almost 40 years now in Canada. A soul lost in the purgatorial inbetween of our small world after all.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I have lived, in order but avoiding duplicates, in: Edmonton (Canada), Uppsala (Sweden), Ottawa (Canada), Edinburgh (Scotland), Leeds (England), Toronto (Canada), Mexico City (Mexico) and now this monstrous wonder that is London. And, in contrast to my mother who belongs nowhere, I belong EVERYWHERE.

It is to my very great delight that I realize that my current bout of culture shock is not coming from a Canadian in London, but rather a Canadian accustomed to the life and priorities of Mexico now living in London. In some way, I am tri-cultural, perhaps more.

It is my learned Mexican-ness - a Mexican-ness that I never took the liberty to assume had absorbed into me - that rebels against Britain's obsession for deconstructing every little thing to point out its good and bad elements. Life in Mexico means having more important things to think about than what it the sugar content on that package of tomatoes (which are wrapped here oh-so-carefully to avoid any bruising or blemishing), or whether my hair is having an adverse reaction to British hard water. No Mexican ever looked at me at me and mused whether my wardrobe was pub- or club-worthy.

No, in Mexico the biggest concern was personal safety or money. Who cares what blouse you're wearing if you're going to get mugged on the way to club, you know? (Not that I was ever mugged, not in three long years, for the record...) Who cares about a split end as long as you have money for groceries?

And, okay, sure, I am aware that a large percentage of Mexicans perceive a connection between skin colour and opportunity, a white is right, a pale is... good...

And, okay, sure, that was a struggle I never had to deal with, or, perhaps, inherently benefited from to an unknown degree, as my skin is the colour of skim milk: so pale I am vaguely blue.

It is, therefore, extremely possible that Juan Mexico spends far more time deconstructing his freckles than I was ever aware of. I leave ample room for being schooled in this regard.

But one thing I can tell you is that, in three beautiful years, I, personally, lost the habit of deconstructing every damn thing.

(My ex-roommate will choke on his milk here. Seriously, P, I did. What you saw there? Was BETTER. Was calm. Was laissez-faire, anything goes, living my life kind of freedom, really it was.)

And, people, in the absence of all those nudges and pokes and whispers and hints, the amount of work I got done on sorting out the junk closet that is my heart, mind and soul was impressive. I left Mexico in May ready to be Happy Erika, Positive Erika, Moving Forward Erika, Erika 2.0. I was going to burst into the world as a radiant sunbeam of love and light, anti-perspirated against the small stuff. It was going to be a blinding, spectacular definition of self as the very best self I could be.

It hasn't worked.

And it's not that I'm not happy or positive or moving forward, it's that, all of a sudden, I have noticed that moving forward is much, much more difficult. It is slogging forward, fighting upstream against a massive, culturally-created swamp-river of over-analysis and self-destructiveness.

I don't care about the sugar content in my tomatoes!!! They're tomatoes!!!!!!

I don't care about the calories in my cottage cheese!!! Or my curry!!! Or my ice cream!!!

I am not a better person when I'm going to Fitness First every day!!!

The pressure to pick apart is staggering. The continual stream of comments I hear from those around me is irritating. The pressure to re-link my breakfast foods and which neighbourhood I live in to my personal self-worth us unrelenting. Life is very easy here, you see, so people have the luxury or worrying about the DUMBEST FLIPPING THINGS!

AAARGH!!!

I am experiencing a bit of culture shock.

And, damn it, I refuse to concede the distance gained. Bring out the tequila, ladies and gents, I'm going upstream.