Gradually realizing that, now that my personality feels contingent and impersonal, new social contexts feel like jolts in the reality model.
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The difference in energy from Norway to Poland is extreme.
Polish social reality is anarchic, loud, harsh and intensely warm.
Norway is comparatively structured, cushy and quiet, cold/detached and yet mostly pleasant.
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So entering Poland doesn't just feel like different climate and sensory environment.
It feels like being hit by a tidal wave of expectations, demands and intangible yet imposing structures.
Like so:
GIF
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Without recourse to sociology, it feels like there are things I can do here that couldn't be done in Norway, and vice-versa.
Like the laws of reality are subtly different.
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I'm sure this will come across as fairly esoteric. I certainly wouldn't know what I was talking about, not so long ago.
But I'll be damned if it isn't one of the most oppressive feelings I've ever experienced.
Replying to
In Norway, walls feel like walls. Heavy, solid. Even the thinner wooden walls.
Every wall in Poland feels brittle, paper-thin. Like it's just waiting for the sudden blow of a hammer. Even meter-thick concrete.
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I could go on making comparison after comparison, and I expect it would all sound like overly affectatious poetry.
But it's not.
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Replying to
I relate code switching to this - spending time with different groups of people in my life resonated with the description you gave of figuring out the rules, hierarchy, expectations, way of interaction, etc