The Searching 'Hidden Immigrant'

While reading this article, of course I relate to what all the different people are saying. However, I still do tell people I grew up abroad. It’s become less and less of an occurrence because just like Downer in the article, people can’t relate to it unless they’ve lived a similar lifestyle, but I still cling to that because I truly believe it’s one piece of my identity that I refuse to let go of regardless if people can understand it or not.

Although I don’t like competition and I don’t like the premise of “selling” oneself when in an interview, I make sure to always let the interviewees know that particular aspect of me. I think it makes me unique and sets me apart from others. That’s the one thing I know sets me apart and my experience with it have been less than positive. It sets me apart in the sense that I have a different, world-view. But it also sets me apart in the sense that I cannot always connect with my peers and fellow Americans.

Libby Stephens discusses several stages a TCK goes through when repatriating back to their passport country. These are the potential pitfalls when in the third stage, called the “Hidden Immigrant” stage.

Potential pitfalls during the Hidden Immigrant stage:

1. Deep loneliness
2. Being trapped in the past
3. Overly critical of the passport country
4. Habitual anger and bitterness
5. Depression

I definitely have been in the “Hidden Immigrant” stage that Libby Stephens discusses, for several years. I would hope most people learn to adjust and move forward with their lives, but my adjustment here to the States involved doing it on my own. I didn’t have support of family. I didn’t have mentors who were knowledgeable in my experiences abroad. Now that it has been several years since I’ve been back to the States, I’m assuming most people wonder why I haven’t gotten over that initial reverse culture shock. And I’m wondering that too.

I was accustomed to community and a small, intimate living area where people genuinely cared about each other and the well-being of what was going on with each other. I felt loved and supported and could flourish.

Here, though, I feel like just another floating face in the sea of society with no real purpose or no real connections. Even though I’ve lived in Ohio for the past four years, I don’t have much to account for it. No sense of community. No sense of family. No sense of belonging.

I have to ask myself, what am I doing to contribute to this??

When I first moved to the States, and went to Lee University, I definitely realized quick I didn’t fit in and I was able to use my awesome TCK skills and become a chameleon to fit in. But something snapped inside of me when my parents left the Azores. I could no longer pretend. I could no longer put my feelings aside and stuff them away. I think I try to continue to do that fearing that people just won’t understand and will reject me.

I threw off all masks. I threw off all pretenses. I threw off anything that wasn’t the real me. And what I was left with was a scared, insecure, very vulnerable person feeling overwhelmed in a country – in a society where most people have made their roots and homes.

So, do I go back to my chameleon ways and mold to what I think people want me to be so I can fit in? Or do I continue to struggle, looking and searching for my identity and doing it alone?

"They know not the side of me that belongs across the sea.
They only know what the eye can see; the American inside of me.
And yet this American is tainted, stained, infused
With the chaos, the wonders, the essence of her other home."

~Alexandra Bangalore, India Sept. 2008