Just When You Thought I Forgot About This Blog...

Well hello. It’s been a while.

Not gonna lie, it’s been a difficult couple of weeks with homesickness and culture shock. That and a pressing paper assignment and general lack of inspiration. But anyway, I’m a writer and there’s always something to write about. So here we go.

            As you well know by now, I’m startled by the differences in physical presentation between the Irish and what I’m used to back in Boston. It’s not that people in the States don’t dress similar to people in Ireland, and vice-versa, but I’m used to a certain thing and haven’t found it here yet. So the gist is, as one friend put it: I miss my crew. I miss the people that I know, and that know me, because I’m comfortable with them. We have our jokes and stories. And I don’t need to wear high heels and ‘hooker makeup’ to impress them, partly because most of them aren’t the kind of people to be impressed by that, and partly because I don’t care if I impress them. Because I know them, and they know me, and once all your secrets and tics are out on the table, appearances don’t count for much.

            So then, other than missing my friends, why is it that I feel so uncomfortable in Ireland? Because, cliché or not, first impressions are lasting. I see British and Irish television and websites and magazines, and I see such a focus on appearance. I walk through city centre and see young girls with too much makeup and hair dye, wearing mini skirts and skinny jeans. And it scares me, because at first it seems unfamiliar and foreign. For several weeks I felt lost, like I didn’t fit in, based on these first impressions. Until I realized that it’s exactly the same back home. Anyone coming to the U.S. for the first time would be floored by the massive focus placed on physical appearance in mainstream culture. It would be one of the first things that they’re exposed to, so it would make for a lasting first impression.

            For a few weeks, I struggled between fitting into what I thought was the mould in Ireland and staying the person I was before I left Boston.  A bad few months before leaving combined with the sudden shock of arrival left me feeling stranded and isolated. I was blinded by my first impression: that everyone here was alike, that only one thing was valued in culture and, above all, that I didn’t fit in. Until, again, I realized that it’s exactly the same back home. Maybe I didn’t fit in right away when I moved to Boston. But eventually I found my crew, my friends who still want to be my friends regardless of my footwear or hair color. And it took me a long time to become the person I am now, and I’m not going to sacrifice that to blend in. I should know by now that fitting in is not the most important thing. So I’m going to gather my self-esteem up from where it’s fallen here at rock bottom. I’m sure that somewhere in Dublin, there’s a group of tattooed, Metallica t-shirt-wearing, jazz-listening, cat-loving, inappropriate-joke-telling, cheap-beer-drinking bunch of dorks who are looking for an American to join their ranks—my surrogate crew until I get back home.

That one was a bit personal, but it ought to keep you satisfied for a while, vultures.