Being foreign everywhere

Hi all, apologies for how awkward this post may flow, I'm new to this reddit thing. I'm finally back in my hometown after almost three years of tormenting myself in attempts to get into university in Germany, an oceans distance away from what home once was.

When I was in high school, the thought of studying abroad was my saving grace; walkable cities, supposidly better politics and the holy grail; an education practically free of cost. I could bore you with the tasks that occupied the past 2.5 years but put simply, I learned German, completed a 13th year of high school, and have resided in 2 different cities and 7 different apartments. Lots of people came and went and alas, I have been accepted into my dream university, but at the cost of having had lost myself ever since I first moved abroad at the ripe age of 18.

Loneliness had always been something I've loathed in. I mean to leave my family, friends, and life in the US behind was a result of either painfully tense family ties or ones too loose to be salvaged, fleeting friendships, and a constant underlying feeling that a conversation fully understood was rare to witness, or to even participate in at all. This is a wild time jump but one week ago I was dumped, for reasons that are mostly irrelevant to this post but partially because I kept promising to be someone that I am no longer capable of being. My ex was awaiting someone, and I couldn't help but feel like I was waiting for her too. I haven't been an attentive or caring partner, but more importantly, and selfishly, I haven't been cooking, or drawing, or writing, or playing guitar, or even thinking. I've been floating, I've been robotic. I've been feeling like a shell of myself. Given that I was just dumped and in the city that I originally resided in when I first moved to Germany, I decided to procrastinate addressing my feelings like an idiot and meet all my old friends in the area.

And there's such an odd background hum whenever you see someone that you haven't spoken to for so long. A girlfriend of mine, who one year ago danced with me at the local jazzbar, and a guy friend with a posh name who pretends not to be posh, who photographed me and my ex to progress his photography career just 5 months ago, and my previous language school teacher who has since quit, who I had stayed in contact with and just one week ago grabbed a beer with as her daughter tagged along. I could feel this hum in every visit and every clink of beer glasses; this feeling of self disappointment that no social encounter could repair.

How long has it been since I've really enjoyed something?

On the flight home I revisited my journal entries leading all the way back to November, mainly to dissect my failed relationship that began that month. After an hour of reading my predictable and sloppy handwriting, I was reluctant to read further. Every entry was similar but filled with new vocabulary grasping to sound different (and to combat the fact that German has made my English signifantly worse); I was "fatigued," "disassociative," "exhausted," "melancholy," you name it. Every entry: describing how it's such a nice day and how I feel guilty for not living it, clawing for a version of myself that has the energy, the self virtue, and the will to change. But how does one change this feeling? My journal was closed hastily because I know that treading beyond November meant accepting that I had been feeling this way for years; I know it, I've lived it, I didn't want to read it.

And alas I'm in the US and I am feeling more niahlistic than ever. I'm seeing my grandma today at 2PM, after 7 months of being a voice on her cellphone. And in calling me and planning this long awaited visit, she only seems excited that her young granddaughter is willing to deep-clean her fridge, toss out some expired jams and pickle jars, and collect the dust behind her washing machine. Maybe I'm thinking too much but returning home rejuvinates this hum in conversaton again. This hum of seeing my best friend from high school and realizing that we have nothing to say besides self acknowledged culture shock and work drama from Ace Hardware. And my parents still work as they do all days and I can't describe it but everytime I'm back in this house, I can't help but feel like there's something missing. I can't help but feel like I'm a ghost. And though these relationships have always felt tedious and unwilling, I still ask myself; how long has it been since I've really enjoyed something?

No amount of baths, access to ranch dressing and Red 40, architecture from the 70s, or people, in all seriousness *the people*, can strip this feeling from me that it has been 2.5 years since I have been engulfed in anything beyond fighting with an immigration office, or re-learning calculus to make my high school diploma equivalent to the German one, or differentiating silly little words like umgehen with the preposition 'mit' and umgehen with no preposition at all. I feel lonely and as I have said many many times before, I am utterly exhausted.

And once again, selfishly, what I mourn beyond my now ex partner is his family dinners that I could intrude on upon every visit to my previous city, welcomed with open arms and curiosity that in retrospect is probably why my heart feels crushed being with my own family right now. There is no dinner here, nor a weekly update on everyones lives or a fun political debate. It's rare that I get a "how are you?" in this household which is ironic because my hometown is in the midwest where this question is probably repeated to a local cashier so often that it begins to ache. My ex and I are in many ways quite contrasting and in some ways I find myself envious of it. He has these weekly family dinners, a friend group originating from middle school, a room filled with art of his own doing and here I sit, in my hometown, admission letter in hand, bilingual, and with an emptiness that's so present and heavy that it's hard to articulate.

I feel known but not understood. I feel ambitious but I don't feel grounded in anything. I can't remember the last time I had done something out of enjoyment despite the constant question prying for an answer. I have so many wonderful friends, and I'm grateful to have a supporting family but I despise the impermenance that comes with my pursuit of education abroad. I feel foreign and fleeting everywhere I go.

--- I'd appreciate any advice, any anecdote, anything. And I know this was probably a horrednous fucking mess to read and I'm sorry for that