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Have you ever looked for a word to describe something so special but it just doesn't seem to exist? I have been searching for this word my entire life......It was quite by accident, but won't forget how my heart leapt when I stumbled upon it.
I will always remember how excited I was, having just attended my senior class graduation with 33 of my class in Brasilia, Brazil. 4 years of amazing experiences in a foreign country.....The closeness we felt, all different nationalities, experiencing a new culture all together, bonding in ways that most never would given our circumstances...
I brought that excitement home... feeling accomplished, feeling good about being a good American in an international assignment... not that kind the movies make fun of....no, the one where I wasn't sure I even wanted to go "home"....
But I did... I couldn't wait to share the amazing set of experiences I had had living abroad... I had so much to offer, such unique perspectives, so many different cultures, so many lessons learned that I felt I could share....
"So, did you live in a hut on stilts in the jungle?"
That was the first question I got from a friend back in Utah..... I almost thought he was joking....he was not! I said, have you ever heard of Sao Paulo? He shook his head.... I said it was a city bigger than NYC!! Rio de Janeiro was just behind it....
That was the first inkling of many to follow over the years of how these conversations were going to go....
Next was.....
"Did you have running water or a car?"
"Did they have McDonald's there?"
"You must have hated it there"
Next was...
"You had a black girlfriend??"
Really??? This couldn't be happening....
I remember being truly confused first.... then angry....then sad... they had no idea. My understanding of how this was going to be slowly drooled into my brain like thick molasses... Yes, Exulansis. I lived in shock for a long while. I realized I was all alone with these incredible memories and experiences... noone really cared, noone understood and noone was going to do a dang thing about it either.... I was truly alone in my own country that seemed so foreign, among 'my' people that had no empathy or no understanding of the world in the least. Where and how on earth was I going to reconcile this debilitating disconnect? ....The answer is a longer story.....I have written about it in previous posts.
It is amazing how finding this word after so many years still immediately hits me dead center... Those things did happen, I was there... it was amazing. I am less lost today. But, now I have a most beautiful new vocabulary word that sings to my soul when I see it.
Like a friend that I never knew.....
