Exulansis: A Word for MKs

Exulansis: (n) the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it. (John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows) 

When I first came back from Brasil, I used to talk about it all the time. It was all I knew, and it was everything that I loved. My longing for everyone to understand what I had experienced and what my views were was only surpassed by my limited ability to explain it. How do you explain a life where people don't own cars but own boats? How do you explain the strange smashing of languages and quotes that your siblings and missionary kids friends understand intuitively? How do you explain your aversion to little things that don't bother anyone else: the way the lights of the city never die, the seeming wastefulness at every meal, and the repetitive, flimsy nature of worship songs at church? 

You don't. 

Or maybe, like me, you try, and it is so hard and frustrating to hit the wall of collective misunderstanding that you give up. 

I don't talk about home that much anymore, except with my family and those MKs that I grew up with. Part of it, I think, is because I have adapted to the culture I am in, and another part of it is because I have grown tired of feeling that the people around me cannot relate. There are few things more frustrating than telling a story that is supposed to light the room up with laughter, when in reality it falls into silence because no one else but you "gets the joke." And when this keeps happening, you start to realize it isn't just the jokes that people don't "get." In a way, because of how special and unique your experiences are in this culture, the people around you will never understand, never really "get" you. 

Sometimes, when I realize how long it's been since I had fried cheese, or made a batch of powdered milk, or sat on a crowded bus and smelled that scent of sweaty bodies mixed with notes of soap and fresh river breezes, I wonder if I'm losing a part of myself by not talking about my experience. Is there a way to overcome this exulansis? 

There is a push, I think, to give up the things that other people cannot understand, to be so relatable that we lose what makes us special. I do this because I want to feel that I can blend in to the scenery and not be that one person in the group who will never be understood. However, I cannot continue to do this. I have tried, but it's wrong. It is wrong to deny the truth of where I come from, of what I know, and never push other people to think about a life that is different from their own by sharing my story.

I can honestly say, I don't really know what fighting "exulansis" looks like for me or for any MK. Maybe it is as simple as saying, "I will not be ashamed of where I come from." 

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