I am completely miserable. Okay, that is a flat out lie, I am not completely miserable. I have a more solid group of friends at Sonoma than I have ever had before, I have a new boyfriend I am pretty smitten with, and I can buy a sandwich in a huge American portion for like 6 bucks. However, I have been back in California for 5 months already, and every week it gets harder to be away from Copenhagen. I have stopped dreaming in Danish. I can't understand the songs I have as well anymore. My pronunciation is bad to the point it doesn't even sound like Danish anymore. I am forgetting things like what frikadeller smell like when you cook them and how to ride a bus. I talk too much and I talk too loudly. I drive when I should be biking or walking. I eat low quality food. I just stress and worry all the time. I am back to setting impossible standards for myself. I feel not only my memories slipping away, but the change I saw in myself that I loved so much. I know that I will remember the big things like Culture Night and the first time I saw snow fall, but I am losing the finite details of what the air smelled like during the first snow and what hygge feels like on an ordinary night cooking a meal together and eating with close friends.
Feeling like I am losing hygge is my greatest sadness. I find myself frustrated with Americans for not understanding the concept, when it in reality it took me 4 months before I even started to associate it as something besides "cozy." In my Anthropological Globalization class we were discussing theories about being limited by the language you speak. You cannot understand something if you cannot describe it, because you are unable to conceptualize something if there is no way to define it. It is a rather abstract idea, but I feel that the rest of the world is limited by the absence of "hygge" in our vocabulary. Denmark is the happiest country in the world, and researchers always conclude that it is because of their low expectations and modesty. While this may be true, I am going to argue and say that the real reason that Danes are so happy is that they have a word that describes a wonderful and meaningful thing/feeling that no other country has realized is important enough to define. The priority hygge is given as a way of life in Denmark is what defines my experience abroad.
I just tried 4 different times to write a description of hygge for my readers who haven't experienced, and I can't. I am not sure if this is because I refuse to define it as "cozy" because it is so much more than that, or if it is because I haven't really experienced it since I left Denmark and am forgetting what it means.
I am trying to accept I am back in America for good, but every day I am here I feel a little bit of a part I loved about myself slipping away. I cannot live in the past, and I will never get to relive the year I had, but I wish that America would make herself a little easier to deal with. You don't need to hear about my struggles readjusting any more than to know that my life is hygge-less here, and that is heartbreaking.
