Confessions of an Expat: The Challenge of Coming Home

I can't quite pinpoint the moment the house I grew up in ceased to be "home" anymore. When I went away to college my grandmother would correct me when I said I was going "home" for the holidays. But that was still too early for me, I wasn't ready to hear it yet then. Through all my travels after college, I always thought of my flight back to the US as my return "home", I just couldn't shake the feeling. Finally, after becoming an expat, selling all my belongings and moving to Thailand, although I still say that I'm coming home for the holidays when I refer to the US, I really don't mean it anymore.

"My family home taught me what to seek out in the world, and now that I have found what I am looking for, home is simply wherever I am."

Home is what feels comfortable, what you know best and home is the place that challenges, pushes and encourages you along your way. While the four walls of my parents home no longer feel like home to me, they have been replaced with equally important elements. Now, the view through my camera lens, the contents of my backpack and the feeling of freshly cleaned socks make me feel at home. The feeling of home is always changing, but so am I, and I have come to accept that. My family home taught me what to seek out in the world, and now that I have found what I am looking for, home is simply wherever I am.

Being caught off guard by your own culture is always an insightful experience, no matter how trivial some elements are. After spending extended amounts of time outside of US boarders, I'm always firstly surprised by how silly the US dollar looks. The colorful Euro, beautiful Thai Baht or the One Hundred Trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe are all unique in their own way, but I grew up with the dollar and it is always funny to me when it begins to look strange.

Culture shock takes many forms, and for many, the feelings of returning home are simply indescribable. The first few times I returned home from meaningful adventures abroad, I feel into what I could only assume was depression, a feeling which until then was quite foreign to me. I would sit alone on the couch, in silence, simply replaying the memories and experiences of my journeys in my head. I would ache to return to the road, to do anything else but be back in my familiar surroundings.

Each time I step off the plane back in the US, its not the typical things that throw me into reverse culture shock. I'm not in a mad rush to run to In-n-Out for a burger, or sprint to the pub for a pint of my favorite beer. I'm not rushing to flip on the tube and catch up on reality TV or enjoy the luxuries of western life, like using a washing machine or a microwave. What hits me first, and what sticks the longest, is the silence. The silence of the people around me, the strangers on the street, the silence of the community, the city, the country. I never notice the constant humming of other countries, the sound of community, interaction and connectedness, because it always feels normal, real, like life should feel. Maybe it is all lost to me in the excitement of being in a new place, but one thing is certain upon returning to America, the silence is eery.

The scariest part of the silence of the US is that it is nothing new, it is not something that developed since I left, it is not created in my absence. The silence is a core element of our society, and something that we all become numb to. It terrifies me that it becomes the norm, the regular and the expected. After a few weeks, t he silence disappears, and life is just normal again. All the life breathed into my senses before I returned is rubbed away, forgotten, muted in the back of my mind. Replaced by the mild, the minute, the mundane.

The silence used to terrify me, but now it motivates me. The silence isn't bad, it simply isn't for me. It reminds me of what is out there, what makes me happy and the feeling I am always chasing yet never hope to catch. By those who travel often, the feeling of knowing what is out there is often described as somewhat of a curse, a disease an addiction. Now that I know what is out there, I am incapable of not exploring it, no matter the challenges or obstacles that lay in the way. Because at the end of the day, struggling to chase the dream will always be better than succeeding at comfortably living in the silence.

Jeff Johns is the co-founder and editor of Latitude 34 Travel Blog . Through 65 countries on 6 continents he has accumulated a seemingly endless stream of odd information, interesting stories and helpful tips and tricks to better travel. Jeff's goal is to visit all 204 countries on Earth before he is too senile to remember them all.

A graduate of the Visual Journalism program at the Brooks Institute, his true passions lay in honest visual storytelling, documentary filmmaking, Thai food and a good laugh.

Together with his girlfriend Marina, they run Latitude 34 Travel Blog as a source of helpful information for those who love to travel or those who simply dream of it. If you have a comment or suggestion, send them an email at hello@latitudethirtyfour.com and they'll respond super fast!