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Alternative Lives R Available's avatar

As a Brit living abroad, I'd agree with the sentiments and experiences, and maybe add a few observations.....

Walking around the food isles in a supermarket, or the local market, and reminding myself that yes, all those things that look really strange must actually be edible, and if they are there, for sale, then some people actually like eating them!

Realising that the woman ahead of me in the queue that is chatting to the teller or server, seemingly exchanging life stories, is the other side of everyone else's laid back lifestyle that I so envy and I need to relax, take another deep breath and go with the flow!

That spending two hours over a couple of coffees in a pavement cafe, without ever looking at my phone, just watching people go past, or meeting each other, or nothing much at all, is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and doesn't require me to feel guilty about wasting my time or anything at all!

That in much of Europe, someone's car is not at all connected to their status or wealth. Some of the well off businessmen, esteemed academics, respected politicians, renowned musicians or actors, will unselfconsciously drive some 20 year old heap of shit that must still pass the strict European road safety laws, but you have no idea how. That means it is very hard to judge who you might be talking to in a chance encounter, so you have to take people more seriously until you find out!

Lastly, a few years in another country makes it hard to ever fit in at your previous 'home' country. The people you left behind seem to have stayed the same, even for decades, as you have moved on, expanded your views, see things differently, refute the bullshit that others take for granted.......

Just my view.....

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JC Andrijeski's avatar

This really resonates with me, as someone who has also spent much of my life living abroad, although not in Western Europe, mostly in Asia (most recently having spent 6+ years in Thailand). Now that I'm back in the United States and taking care of my aging parents, I feel like such a fish out of water in many respects, and I've been struggling with that "rootless" feeling you mention at the end of your piece.

I wonder, honestly, if the United States, being its own kind of cultural (and even geographic) bubble, is somewhat less forgiving to people who have lived a long time in other places. People are SO sure here that there's a "right" way to live and a "wrong" way that I think they don't know what to do with me, since I haven't done a lot of the things they have (or I did them in the past, but am no longer doing it, like own my own home, etc.), and yet I've done a lot they haven't but that they don't really understand in its full context and just seems "exotic" or "temporary" to them because they can't imagine living that way themselves. I think anyone who hasn't LIVED abroad views others' experiences doing so as a kind of "long vacation" not as a genuinely different way of living (certainly not one that is equally valid).

In reading your piece and reflecting on my own future plans, I'm of two minds. I do like being back here because I've been able to renew family connections and reestablish a more intimate place in their lives... but realistically, the way of being / living in the United States really doesn't "fit" for me anymore. Like you say, I have genuinely changed, and my values and priorities will likely never go back to what they were before I spent so much time living elsewhere (Thailand, India, Australia, and Eastern Europe, mainly). Between that and the political and economic uncertainty here in the States now, I strongly suspect I won't stay here indefinitely. I don't know that I'd go back to Asia, but I could very easily see myself living abroad again, and likely either in Europe or the U.K., where I already have good friends. I recently spent three months in Spain, Portugal, and the South of France, and that felt very comfortable to me (although new, of course). I'm not planning to move again immediately, not with my parents being in their eighties and needing my help, but I think it's pretty likely I won't stay here much beyond where I'm needed here.

Thank you for your thoughtful and balanced piece on this. It's given me more things to chew on while I think about where I'd like to settle next.

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