Gonna get a little serious in this post.....I recently came across this article on someones facebook post and since the title absolutely matches my life, I decided to read it and as much as I can explain how I feel to people, i'd never get it right, but the lady who wrote this article has it nailed. This is the absolute honest truth about us ex pats (people living in another country other than their own), and i'm sure this is how many of us including myself feel.
Keep in mind when you read the part about wanting to escape yourself and the bad relationships that ended and drama and all that, you know why Darin and I left, and it wasn't because we wanted to escape ourselves, we didn't want to "wipe our slate clean" and go where nobody knew us...we were offered an amazing opportunity and gladly took it ;)
I highlighted in yellow the words that I found myself nodding my head to, and then the last sentence sums up the whole article. It's not every night, but it's after the days where you've sat and thought and wondered, then you can't help but lay awake at night. I used to do it a few times a week, I think because being an ex pat was so new to me, but I now find myself doing it only a few times a month, especially when it's someones birthday or wedding or a specific event i'm missing out on and the huge question that always comes to my head is, "is this worth it"?
Keep in mind when you read the part about wanting to escape yourself and the bad relationships that ended and drama and all that, you know why Darin and I left, and it wasn't because we wanted to escape ourselves, we didn't want to "wipe our slate clean" and go where nobody knew us...we were offered an amazing opportunity and gladly took it ;)
I highlighted in yellow the words that I found myself nodding my head to, and then the last sentence sums up the whole article. It's not every night, but it's after the days where you've sat and thought and wondered, then you can't help but lay awake at night. I used to do it a few times a week, I think because being an ex pat was so new to me, but I now find myself doing it only a few times a month, especially when it's someones birthday or wedding or a specific event i'm missing out on and the huge question that always comes to my head is, "is this worth it"?
What Happens When You Live Abroad
MAY. 21, 2012
A very dependable feature of people who live abroad is finding
them huddled together in bars and restaurants, talking not just about their
homelands, but about the experience of leaving. And strangely enough, these
groups of ex-pats aren’t necessarily all from the same home countries, often
the mere experience of trading lands and cultures is enough to link them
together and build the foundations of a friendship. I knew a decent amount of
ex pats — of varying lengths of stay — back in America, and it’s reassuring to
see that here in Europe, the “foreigner” bars are just as prevalent and filled
with the same warm, nostalgic chatter.
But one thing that undoubtedly exists between all of us, something
that lingers unspoken at all of our gatherings, is fear. There is a palpable
fear to living in a new country, and though it is more acute in the first
months, even year, of your stay, it never completely evaporates as time goes
on. It simply changes. The anxiousness that was once concentrated on how you’re
going to make new friends, adjust, and master the nuances of the language has
become the repeated question “What am I missing?” As you settle into your new
life and country, as time passes and becomes less a question of how long you’ve
been here and more one of how long you’ve been gone, you realize that life back
home has gone on without you. People have grown up, they’ve moved, they’ve
married, they’ve become completely different people — and so have you.
It’s hard to deny that the act of living in
another country, in another language, fundamentally changes you. Different
parts of your personality sort of float to the top, and you take on qualities,
mannerisms, and opinions that define the new people around you. And there’s nothing
wrong with that; it’s often part of the reason you left in the first place. You wanted to evolve, to change something, to put
yourself in an uncomfortable new situation that would force you to into a new
phase of your life.
So many of us, when we leave our home countries, want to escape
ourselves. We build up enormous webs of people, of bars and coffee shops, of
arguments and exes and the same five places over and over again, from which we
feel we can’t break free. There are just too many bridges that have been
burned, or love that has turned sour and ugly, or restaurants at which you’ve
eaten everything on the menu at least ten times — the only way to escape and to
wipe your slate clean is to go somewhere where no one knows who you were, and
no one is going to ask. And while it’s enormously refreshing and exhilarating
to feel like you can be anyone you want to be and come without the baggage of
your past, you realize just how much of “you” was based more on geographic
location than anything else.
Walking streets alone and eating dinner at tables for one — maybe
with a book, maybe not — you’re left alone for hours, days on end with nothing
but your own thoughts. You start talking to yourself, asking yourself questions
and answering them, and taking in the day’s activities with a slowness and an
appreciation that you’ve never before even attempted. Even just going to the
grocery store — when in an exciting new place, when all by yourself, when in a
new language — is a thrilling activity. And having to start from zero and
rebuild everything, having to re-learn how to live and carry out every day
activities like a child, fundamentally alters you. Yes, the country and its
people will have their own effect on who you are and what you think, but few
things are more profound than just starting over with the basics and relying on
yourself to build a life again. I have yet to meet a person who I didn’t find
calmed by the experience. There is a certain amount of comfort and confidence
that you gain with yourself when you go to this new place and start all over
again, and a knowledge that — come what may in the rest of your life — you were
capable of taking that leap and landing softly at least once.
But there are the fears. And yes, life has gone on without you.
And the longer you stay in your new home, the more profound those changes will
become. Holidays, birthdays, weddings — every event that you miss suddenly
becomes a tick mark on an endless ream of paper. One day, you simply look back
and realize that so much has happened in your absence, that so much has
changed. You find it harder and harder to start conversations with people who
used to be some of your best friends, and in-jokes become increasingly foreign
— you have become an outsider. There are those who stay so long that they can
never go back. We all meet the ex-pat who has been in his new home for 30 years
and who seems to have almost replaced the missed years spent back in his
homeland with full, passionate immersion into his new country. Yes, technically
they are immigrants. Technically their birth certificate would place them in a
different part of the world. But it’s undeniable that whatever life they left
back home, they could never pick up all the pieces to. That old person is gone,
and you realize that every day, you come a tiny bit closer to becoming that
person yourself — even if you don’t want to.
So you look at your life, and the two countries that hold it, and
realize that you are now two distinct people. As much as your countries
represent and fulfill different parts of you and what you enjoy about life, as
much as you have formed unbreakable bonds with people you love in both places,
as much as you feel truly at home in either one, so you are divided in two. For
the rest of your life, or at least it feels this way, you will spend your time
in one naggingly longing for the other, and waiting until you can get back for
at least a few weeks and dive back into the person you were back there. It
takes so much to carve out a new life for yourself somewhere new, and it can’t
die simply because you’ve moved over a few time zones. The people that took you
into their country and became your new family, they aren’t going to mean any
less to you when you’re far away.
When you live abroad, you realize that, no matter
where you are, you will always be an ex-pat. There will always be a part of you
that is far away from its home and is lying dormant until it can breathe and
live in full color back in the country where it belongs. To live in a new place
is a beautiful, thrilling thing, and it can show you that you can be whoever
you want — on your own terms. It can give you the gift of freedom, of new
beginnings, of curiosity and excitement. But to start over, to get on that
plane, doesn’t come without a price. You cannot be in two places at once, and
from now on, you will always lay awake on certain nights and think of all the
things you’re missing out on back home. 
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