We Ain´t in High School Anymore
What returning home after living abroad teaches you about identity, change, and tacos.
Last week, I returned to the States from Portugal for my “final unplug” before beginning the next chapter of my life in France. Translation: close accounts, sell sentimental items, catch up with family and friends, pet-sit in Richmond, VA, and San Francisco, and gather enough official documents to satisfy several governments and at least one mildly irritated bureaucrat. True to nature, I have one carry-on bag for three months and five states. Yes, I´m already sick of wearing the same tired clothes.
Even before the plane landed in Newark, New Jersey, I felt like a fish out of water. I had grown accustomed to Portugal’s slower rhythm of life — leisurely lunches, walkable cities, conversations not conducted at Formula 1 speed — only to be dropped into baggage claim with hundreds of travelers aggressively walking toward taxis while simultaneously texting, drinking iced coffee, and nearly clipping me with roller bags.
Within twenty minutes of landing, someone yelled, “Next!” at me.
Ah yes. I’m home.
Except… it doesn’t quite feel like home anymore.
And that realization is both beautiful and disorienting.
I have become a visitor in my native country, and I feel the shift mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Don’t get me wrong — I will always be a proud American. I still tear up singing our national anthem, will defend proper tacos with my whole chest, and firmly believe no nation on Earth does road trips or snacks better.
But today, I want to answer the question: How do you go back home when home no longer fits the same version of you?
Recently, one friend compared returning home after years abroad to attending a high school reunion. You walk into familiar territory expecting comfort, only to realize everyone — including you — has evolved. The hallways are the same, but the person walking through them isn’t.
Reverse Culture Shock Is Real
Nobody warns you about reverse culture shock.
We prepare for culture shock abroad. We expect the confusion, the awkwardness, the “why does the washing machine live in the kitchen?” moments. But no one tells you that returning home can feel even stranger.
In Portugal, meals are experiences. In America, I had barely unfolded my napkin before the waiter appeared with the check, as if we were participating in a competitive dining event.
And the noise.
Everything beeps, flashes, advertises, alerts, updates, streams, and demands your immediate attention. America feels like living inside seventeen browser tabs, all playing auto-playing videos at once.
It’s not bad. It’s just… intense.
You Change Abroad
Living abroad long-term changes you in ways you don’t fully notice until you return home.
I haven’t owned a car in eight years. I now think walking twenty minutes is “close by.” I’ve become protective of public transportation and oddly passionate about the environment. I’m accustomed to hearing multiple languages daily and living among people from every corner of the world. The word familiar is not part of my vocabulary.
Somewhere along the way, my identity quietly stretched beyond the borders of where I was born.
And perhaps that’s the hidden gift of living abroad: you stop seeing your home country as “normal” and start seeing it as simply one culture among many.
That shift changes everything.
Release Expectations
Returning home can feel oddly lonely because people expect you to be the same person you were when you left.
But you’re not.
You’ve adapted. Expanded. Softened in some places and strengthened in others. Your worldview widened while your attachment to certainty shrank. You may feel like you can´t formulate a simple sentence in any language. And, when did you get a funny accent?
Meanwhile, life back home kept moving too.
Friends built routines and careers. Families changed. Cities evolved. Favorite restaurants disappeared, and somehow every highway now has six extra lanes but is still congested.
So release the expectation that returning home will feel exactly as it once did.
It won’t.
And honestly? That’s okay.
Because this strange in-between space — where you no longer fully belong to one place — is also evidence of growth.
You stretched your life beyond familiarity.
You chose discomfort, curiosity, reinvention, and courage.
So yes, during this trip I will inhale good Mexican food like it’s my patriotic duty, buy the specific items I can’t find in Europe (I´m talking to you: shoes, real BBQ, and wool socks), hug dear friends and family, and prepare for my French residency appointment carrying a folder thick enough to qualify as medieval literature.
But I’ll also recognize something deeper:
I didn’t fail to fit back into America.
I simply built a life large enough that one country alone no longer contains all of me.
And maybe that’s what reverse culture shock really is — not losing your home, but realizing your idea of home has expanded.
Turns out, we ain’t in high school anymore.
Thank God.