I have always liked having close friends to talk to. Those girly chats while drinking wine, laughing at ourselves, poking fun at each other… there is something so unique and necessary about having good girlfriends, a bond in our sisterhood, so thick and therapeutic.
It does make for a more interesting life to share your findings, and funny moments discovered along the way during the journey we call life.
Expat life does have a down side. Those long standing friends that you leave behind, you make new ones and leave them too, and although life is super interesting and full of change and new experiences; sometimes I can feel the void left by friends lost but not necessarily gone. Sometimes the time change can really bite.
Today is one of those days. Can I live my life on route to somewhere else forever? When will enough be enough? I keep hoping that one day I will wake-up and decide, it is time to root so deep in one spot that I will never be able to pull up the roots, even if I tried.
I wish I could pick up the phone and chat to my friends back home, or stop in for coffee. Maybe I am getting older, and never really appreciated before the necessity of connecting to family and friends as much as I should have.
Expat life for me is always about getting set up, finding solutions to the upcoming problems, carving out a little life, trying to tick all the boxes… at some point I will crave creature comforts and calm, and to simply stop moving.
It is during these times that I dream of being closer to home. In the long run, I know what we are giving our children is remarkable experiences, but there is a self sacrificing cost to your own wellbeing to achieve this at times. That’s what having children is about, putting them first. I wish everyone did that. But anyone can have kids, no training required and they don’t come with a manual on how to raise them now do they? Maybe we are completely wrong, and staying put gives children something different, not better but different.
They may not appreciate us dragging them around the world now, but hopefully, eventually, and with some luck, it will all pay off for them in the end!
