17

I understand objectively at least that thinking of things that made me sad or mad is how my brain siphons the stress of culture shock into something familiar and workable. The hugeness of it—the uncertainty, the desolation, the isolation—won’t compute, so my brain expresses it by bearing down on the hardships in memory that do compute. Like I’m a baby sprouting bones out of my skin and in need of something cold and hard on which to gnaw. How to let it go. How to let it go.