Let's face it: there are going to be times when an expat just doesn't want to be living in Turkey. It has less to do with Turkey itself, per se, and more with expat life in general.
I have a friend who, while living in Romania several years ago, would stock up on groceries on a Friday evening, then hunker down at home all weekend long, only to leave on Monday morning to go to work. That's pretty much what I did this past weekend, except I went out for groceries on Saturday, not Friday. But the first time I did leave the house in more than 48 hours was to go out for lunch today, which is where I wrote this post from. You gotta love Turkey's embrace of wireless EVERYWHERE.
My "opt out" this weekend, as I like to call it, stemmed more from the fact that since I stopped taking my anxiety meds late last week, my brain has been doing somersaults inside my skull. I can't seem to concentrate on anything these days, and I cry at the drop of a hat. On Saturday afternoon when Jeff and I were making mac and cheese, I put the macaroni into the pot, then covered it with water and put it on the stove to boil. Then I looked at it and thought, that doesn't look right. Immediately, I started to cry, but luckily Jeff just lovingly, quietly said, it's ok, we're just going to drain the macaroni out and boil the water first.
Oh dear.
But back to the topic at hand: disengaging from the expat life for a little while. It happens to all of us, at one time or another. You get tired. Tired of speaking Turkish, of dealing with a culture that, after two or 10 or 20 years, is still foreign to you in many ways. Some days you wake up and think, my god, if I have to deal with my nosy neighbor/the crowded pazar/the gym that refuses to open the windows/the wine that is taxed 200% at the grocery store/insert something that annoys you here ONE MORE TIME, I'm going to scream.That's when a weekend spent indoors speaking nothing but English, watching only American television and eating peanut butter and marshmallows is good for you every once in a while. It grounds you, keeps you from getting lost in this foreign land where not everything is clear 100% of the time.
I pride myself on being pretty good at getting out there, learning and speaking Turkish, really getting involved with my community and my neighbors and embracing the way of life here. I moved here so that I could live a different lifestyle that wasn't available to me in the US, and I completely avail myself of it here, believe me.
But sometimes....oh sometimes....I wish that I could get an electrician who understood that when you tug at a cord plugged into an outlet, the outlet and all the wires attached to it SHOULD NOT pull away from the wall. Sometimes I think I will catch the next flight to Philly if one more person tells me that my cats' hair will get in my brain (which is why, of course, I must get rid of my kitties before having children). Sometimes I really do want to slap the woman who rams me in the ankles with her pazar arabasi (grocery cart) at the market because she wants to get to the broccoli ahead of me.
And those are the days that I go home, close and lock the door, put on my pj's and The Philadelphia Story, eat a chocolate chip cookie and pretend that I'm somewhere else.
How about you? How do you cope when you just can't handle the stresses of expat life?
