France

An Expat Interview and a Mini-Rant About Ghosting People

October 16, 2019November 23, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

When you have a blog, you throw your website address up in all kinds of dark corners of the internet. When you're an expat with a blog, you register your blog site with various expat sites. It's just a thing you do. Late last year, the content editor from one of those sites contacted me out of the blue asking me to contribute to their series of expat interviews. In essence, she'd send me a questionnaire and I'd take time off from banging around in my own wordsmithy to write her something for free in addition to sending some of my photos so as to provide content for her website.Truthfully, I don't mind doing things like this. I like doing things like this. However, Content Editor ghosted after I'd sent her the completed interview. That seemed pretty rude, but I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt. People lose track of things, they get overwhelmed with life, or...

Please Don’t Sit Next to Me

July 23, 2019November 24, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

A few months ago, I was hanging alone with a sandwich while watching Atypical on Netflix. In the season 2 episode, "A Nice, Neutral Smell," the main character, Sam, who is autistic, attends his sister's track meet. Standing in the bleachers, a girl in front of him turns her head back and forth, her ponytail whipping Sam in the face. After he's smacked a few times, Sam seizes the ponytail and doesn't let go until his father intervenes.Sure, this happens because of Sam's autism. He doesn't have the same concept of social norms that neurotypicals do. The thing is, when I watched this scene, I nearly spat sandwich all over my living room because I was cheering. More than once in my life, I've wanted to do exactly what Sam did.Sitting next to strangers in public can be stressful. Some instances are mentally and emotionally taxing, detracting from the experience of whatever it is you're trying to do. Maybe it's...

Living Abroad Makes You Talk Funny

November 16, 2018November 23, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

There's a scene in Highlander where our hero, the immortal Connor MacLeod, gets hauled in by the New York City popo for engaging in some swordfight and beheading shenanigans in a parking lot during a wrestling match. During the questioning, a cop tells him he talks funny, and asks where he's from. Without hesitation, 450 year-old MacLeod answers, "Lots of different places."He talks funny because he's a French actor portraying a 16th century Scottish man. If you suspend your disbelief and allow yourself to have fun, he speaks this way because he's been wandering the globe for more than 400 years and it's distorted his accent into something that can't be identified.I wanted that. The first few months I spent living abroad, I was certain that it was only a matter of time before my American accent softened. That after years of being immersed in a sea of French language, my English would become smoother at the edges where the...

These Days, I’m Totally Cool With Being a Goat-Eating White Trash Princess Barbie

March 12, 2018November 23, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

If I were ranking each decade of my life, my 40s would have the top score. It's a comfortable place of knowing myself better than ever before, and full-blown adulthood is an achievement that brings rewards previously unimagined. It's a strange time of contradictions where I give fewer shits, but care more deeply. I still feel outrage and anger, but find that it isn't channeled the same way, and is focused on different targets. I'm wiser, but am still learning and pay attention to the lessons with greater awareness. I'm better equipped to know which battles to fight, and which to let go. And why.In 2003, the couple living next door began calling me "Barbie" soon after we met. I'm like a Barbie doll, they say. I shake my head, and tell them they're wrong. I love hanging out with these two women. We open the doors of our apartments and sit on the steps, the three of us drinking...

A Story About Expat Depression and How I Might Be a Wizard

January 25, 2018November 23, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

When you move to another country, the whirlwind of emotions begins to wreak havoc before you even take the suitcase out of the closet. Anticipation. Fear. Sadness. The entire spectrum from a childlike eagerness all the way to paralyzing despair. Trading in home, friends, family, your native language, and all that is safe, comfortable, and familiar for a strange and uncertain future is scary, but exciting. Profoundly exciting. I often deal with complex emotions and challenges in one of three ways: 1) writing about them 2) completely avoiding them with chemicals and escapist entertainment 3) Googling the shit out of every aspect and detail until I fill my brain with enough information to comfort myself, or ignite a full-on freak out.In 2005, I scoured the Internets and found mountains of bullshit about what moving to Paris is like for an American. Intimidating bullshit that made me feel like a sewer rat. These blogs and sites were written by people very...

Here’s a Story About How to Stop Eating Bullshit

March 1, 2017March 1, 2017 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

Passports are amazing. In 1998, when I received my first passport, it was as though I had a golden ticket that could take me anywhere. I flipped through the pages, dreaming of all the stamps that would one day fill this little blue-covered book. I was an insecure twenty-something who graduated from high school two years late and had just been fired from my low-paying factory job. People like me didn't travel. People like me only visited far away places in books and movie screens. That's what I believed. So, it was funny that I had a round-trip ticket to London, a packed bag, and a Let's Go! guide to Britain under my arm.Other countries were an intimidating and weird magic. I wanted to experience that.During that adventure, I explored various parts of England and Scotland. I took the Eurostar to Paris. I rode the métro. I made an ass of myself. I talked with strangers, got lost, rained on,...