Diary of an Expat

Many times throughout the lives of everyone I have ever known they have wanted to run away. Regardless of how overwhelmed each person has been, they've stayed and 'stuck it out' because they've felt they've had no other choice. I'm a master at finding choices where none should be. My entire life has been daydreams of crafting my own destiny into something less like a Normal Rockwell painting, and more akin to a snowboarder diving off the side of a mountain on the extreme sports channel. Life, it is said, is what you make it.

Years ago the divorce my former husband asked me for was finalized. Not because he filed, but I did. By the time my mother died, we knew whatever had held our marriage together was long gone and our friendship had started to wane as well. I knew it was time things ended - quietly, cleanly, and without malice. We flipped a coin to see who would file. I gave him everything he wanted and told him to make a new start doing whatever it is that he needed to do; my only wish for him is that he would find his own way. He was a graduate student and I ran my own business at the time which had fallen on hard times due to clients who suddenly couldn't pay and the Indian engine taking over the technology sector. I knew I needed a clean break, and fast.

I had visited several countries by this time and had more friends outside of my country than in. I looked at my options and what I had to sell. I set a date to move countries in six months. This was shocking to everyone I knew, but not to me. I needed a clean slate, and I'd get one somehow. I sold my car and bought the plane ticket. Six months later I was standing in a winter landscape with $20 in my pocket and a dictionary. I justified this to myself over and over as each person asked me why I had moved, and why here? I've never had an answer to this that made any sense or held any logic. I needed a clean slate; I needed to write my own history.

I worked as a copy editor in my first job. It was a good, respectable job at a weekly newspaper full-time. I was proud that I had been able to make the switch from country to country in a near-seamless manner. The day of my contract signing they let me go saying that despite my assistance to the paper being a positive one, there wasn't enough work to keep me on. The honeymoon ended abruptly.

I spent months freelancing for various publications, but the fire of my writing was gone. My muse had abandoned me and I hated her for it. I turned into a troubled writer; a Fitzgerald-come-lately. My friends avoided me, although they knew - or perhaps hoped - that this would pass. After months of seclusion, I finally came out of hiding only to realize that the past was still just as close as it had been before. Even with the clean slate, I hadn't cleaned myself of the past and had to work through it just the same. As I did, I stumbled across a job working for a daily newspaper that needed a new copy editor.

I worked as a copy editor for a year at a respectable paper and felt that I had finally found my calling. As much as I enjoyed writing (although I had never made any money from it at the time), it was nice to have a solid job where my coffee cup would always be waiting for me and I had business cards I didn't have to buy for myself. It was secure, or so I thought. After a year of service and several letters detailing how lovely our newspaper was, printing came to a halt; no warning, no worker's comp, and no explanation. Again I crashed and vowed I'd move and the life that I'd built for myself here, but then I've changed. When you're forced, or force yourself, to give up your belongings I have found you become a great deal less bogged down. On the other hand, a clean slate is exactly that - you have memories, impressions and stories, but nothing to show for how far you've come and no friends you meet at the pub on Saturday night.

This time I opted for a little change. I moved across town. At the time I didn't have a job and had no way to pay rent, so I gave my secondary computer to the landlord in exchange for two months with a roof over my head. That gave me time to rest, rebuild and find my next job which I did thanks to some expat networking which I have never been good at. I am now a copy editor part-time, living in a city which feels more like home to me than most places I have lived and for the first time in my life I felt free. Almost free of my past, free to relax, free to be myself and free to make my own dreams come true instead of wait for somewhere else, or someone else, to do it for me.

The borders of countries hold in laws, citizens and sometimes language. They don't keep your problems, your fears, or your failures (perceived or otherwise). I will always remember that although starting over may seem easier at times and running away may offer promises of dreams come true, there isn't a place you can go to run away from yourself. I will not allow shadows to rule my life and I cannot build something on nothing. That said, there are few tests of strength and character that can compare to blindly flinging yourself into the unknown, the alien and the foreign. The benefits, for me, have outweighed the scars, but barely, and it took several years to get here; still here I am - changed and not and a better person for having taken the blind leap of faith in myself that I could hold it together.