Tag: departure

The Closer We Get To Moving “Home” The More I Want To Stay Here

A couple of months ago I had an exchange on facebook with a friend of mine from university days.

Sal and her husband have been living in the Middle East for the past three years. They moved there with their three young children so that they could immerse themselves deeply in the context and culture, learn to speak Arabic, and then return to Australia and work more effectively with refugees and other immigrants from the Middle East.

Last month, Sal put the following status up on her facebook profile:

It’s 2 months today until we fly from our home here in the Middle East to our home in Australia. As they say, I am feeling all the feels. I can hardly believe it’s been 3 years (almost).

Like the Grinch, my heart has grown three sizes (or more) since being here. The warmth and depth of hospitality and friendship – often in the midst of incredible hardships – I will cherish always.

I replied:

This is SUCH an up and down time. What an amazing journey you guys have been on. Thinking of you during this time of packing up and saying goodbye and tearing loose and replanting.

Then Sal asked me a question.

Do you find that the closer it gets to leaving, the more you want to stay? I have been looking at new apartments going up near the kids school and thought “It would be nice to live there.”

It was so interesting to see this from Sal. I know this last three years of mothering 3 little ones, building relationships, and learning a new language in a culture and context vastly different from her own have not been easy. And although I don’t know all the ins and outs of their story, I would guess that she has, at times, found herself counting down the days until their return to Australia.

But her question also makes total sense to me.

“Oh, yes. Yes. Totally,” I wrote. “There are so many reasons why this can be.”

I dashed off a jumbled paragraph to Sal about this that day (as we tend to do on facebook), but I found myself thinking about her question long after I’d pressed ENTER.

Since it’s been on my mind (and since I’m pretty sure Sal and I are not the only ones who have inhabited this tension) I want to expand on my answer here today.

woman-staring-out-to-sea

Dear Sal,

Oh, yes. Yes. Totally.

There are so many reasons why this can be.

First, you are finally settled to a large extent. You know how to navigate the environment–how to get places, and where and what to buy at the markets. You can speak the language and actually have a conversation that extends beyond greetings, the weather, and if your baby slept well the night before. You know what to expect from your transplanted life.

And your life there is vibrant and alive and full of details that now feel both normal and yet still, somehow, novel. That daily duality of normal/novel that you are living continues to stretch your perspective and your heart and your emotions. You feel like a different person than you were when you left Australia, and you are. You have stretched in so many ways to grow into an entirely new reality.

But so many things about the future remain unknown. You might be going back to the same city you left, but you are returning a different person. You will likely be living in a different place, doing different things. And those new people and jobs and opportunities are likely impossible to visualize in detail. They are aspirations and possibilities that can pale in comparison to the vivid realities of daily life in your adopted home.

So.

Right now you are simultaneously mourning all the wonderful things you are leaving, without being able to fully grasp all the wonderful things you are going to.

You know that the wonderful things you are leaving when you get on that plane “home,” you’re likely leaving forever. You might come back, but it will never be the same.

And then there are the people. You have cooked and laughed and cried and journeyed with so many people during the last three years. You have heard stories and witnessed realities that have taught you, humbled you, buoyed you, and broken your heart. You have felt privileged, helpless, guilty, grateful, and everything in between.

And you are leaving these people behind to face an uncertain future. You are leaving, when so many of those who will stay behind in your adopted home right now long for their chance to leave.

So it makes perfect sense to me that—on the precipice of leaving—you find yourself longing to stay, celebrating all that is and has been good about your adopted home.

This is a time for both grief and hope, mourning and excitement. And if right now there seems to be more grief than hope—more grief than you would ever have expected to feel during those long, hot early days there—remember that you are letting go of things and people you have come to love and respect.

And remember that all the things you have come to love about the Middle East and all that it has taught you will help align you with others who have loved and lost their homes there, too.

That is why you went in the first place. That is why you are now stepping out in faith again into a new reality and going “home.” To your “other” home.

Oh, Sal. Wishing you and your precious ones safe travels and many fresh joys in the weeks ahead. I’m looking forward to seeing you in this next chapter.

Love,
Lisa

Have you ever experienced this tension?
Please leave a comment and share your experiences.

And, if you’d like to learn more about Sal’s journey in the Middle East, take a look at one of her passion projects during her time there: tea and thread: portraits of Arab women far from home.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

Way back in June of last year, the same weekend that I published my latest book, Love At The Speed Of Email, Mike and I learned that we would be leaving Luang Prabang in April 2013.

Mike’s position is being handed over to a Lao national staff member, which is good. Working yourself out of a job is exactly what you want to do in international development, and Mike’s good at that sort of capacity building.

So this move is a good thing, and we always knew we wouldn’t be here long term.

And, yet.

There’s a difference between knowing you won’t be somewhere long term – that you might be moving in “oh, a year, maybe two” – and suddenly knowing that the clock is ticking.

When we first received the news we had ten months. Now we have less than three.

We’ve spent that seven months alternately thrashing out possible next steps and avoiding discussing the topic because it had gotten all too exhausting. We’ve tried on one possible future after another – holding them up to us mentally and looking them up and down to see how they fit.

The possibilities, and the questions, seem endless. Where will be we most useful? Doing what? Where do we want to be? Doing what?

Australia? The US? Stay in Laos? Move somewhere in Africa? East Timor? How important is it to have access to decent medical care during this season? How much permanent damage am I risking by continuing to live in the tropics with a health condition that’s aggravated by heat? How important is it to my sanity to be able to keep doing some work myself while also being our children’s primary caregiver? Where am I going to have this new baby that’s due to join us in six months? How important is it to Mike’s well-being and the health of the whole family system for him to be doing work he enjoys and believes makes a difference? Does that work have to be in the humanitarian sector? If not, what else is out there? Where do we start looking? Do we want to put down some roots – we who don’t even own a car at the moment, much less a house? Where?

And so it goes. It’s been a long, hard discussion with no easy answers. Mike and I have been forced to acknowledge that as well matched as we are, we are still different people, who want some different things in and from life. We’ve come to realize that some of what first drew us together five years ago has shifted and changed. We’ve had to confront, again, some of the constraints that my health condition and parenthood place upon us. We’ve repeatedly collided with the myth – the hope – that there is an option out there that will be a perfect fit for everyone. That neither of us will really have to forgo some things that we really want.

Ironically, during the six months when people all around the world have been reading the memoir that details the fairytale of our early romance, Mike and have been getting dirty in the trenches of our marriage. We’ve been battling depression, injuries, and some growing and unacknowledged resentments. Failing to communicate well. Trying to come to grips, still, with the earthquake that parenthood has been in our lives. Getting up in the middle of the night again and again and again. Praying for that perfect option (or, failing that, clear guidance) and having neither materialize. Replaying conversations about the future that we’ve already had dozens of times in an exhausting, maddening, spiral of thoughtful decision-making. Waiting.

We’ve been struggling to figure out how to love each other well when it doesn’t come nearly as easily. 

I have moved countries almost a dozen times so far, and these sort of limbo seasons that herald drastic change are my least favourite part of living overseas. There is some excitement at the thought of a brand new adventure, but there is also sadness and a numb sort of exhaustion. Especially when you’re leaving something familiar for the unknown, it’s easy to identify the good in what you’ll be leaving behind and impossible to fully visualize the good that might be lurking just around the next bend in your path. Do this too many times and you risk never really sinking deeply into places or people, never really tasting the good of the present, because part of you is always aware of a looming horizon. Of more coming change. Of yet another inevitable departure.

I don’t know how many more of these transitions my life will hold, but this one, at least, is inevitable. We have fewer than 100 days left in this little town we’ve grown to love and then we’ll be leaving on a jet plane. It’s just … we still don’t know where that plane will be going.

What’s a tough decision you’ve had to make in your own relationship – one where all the pieces didn’t seem to fit neatly? What did you decide to do?

And, what is your least favourite season of living overseas?

Lisa McKay – author, psychologist, sojourner in Laos

Blog: www.lisamckaywriting.com      Books: Love At The Speed Of Email and My Hands Came Away Red