admin… but it leaves it’s shadow behind – Nathaniel Hawthorne
This quote is so fitting for the first blog post in a year.
The past year of my life has been a whirlwind of ups and downs, but I feel like that is the way life goes. It’s never stable for too long because life happens.
I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while and it’s a bit personal so bear with me. Living in a foreign country is hard. It has its own challenges. Being an immigrant *insert tangent*(i loath the term “expat” because it holds so much white privilege and I work my ass off to be here and for what I have, I am an immigrant)*end tangent*
When you pick up and leave everything to move to a new country, once the newness wears off, you realize that you’re here in a country you don’t quite belong. Year after year, you wake up every day trying to find a place you fit in because you left the only place you knew. I know that for most of you who will read this, life has moved on for you since I have left. For me it has too, but in the sense of you being my friend it hasn’t. This post is to help you understand that it takes more communication, more patience, more you taking initiative to keep in touch with me. I now live in limbo… When I talk and message ya’ll, I get stuck. There is a disconnect. I no longer know what to really talk about if you don’t help the conversation move on. I find myself staring at the screen watching the cursor blink because I haven’t talked to you in x amount of time and I don’t relate to you in the same way. I don’t know what’s going on.
People ask me all the time how long I am going to stay in Taiwan. I have no answer for them. Right now it all makes sense for me to stay. I love my life here, I am happy with my partner. But I still remember my life there, with you as my friend.
If you are reading this and you want to re-connect here are somethings you can do:
- message or email me, send me updates about your life not just “oh everything’s good”, the more details = the more connected I will feel toward you.
- send me a postcard/care package
- send me a care-package
- make a stupid video
- send a voice message
I promise if you message/e-mail, despite the time difference I will always reply ASAP. Our relationship is a shadow that I am not ready to depart with. I am simply typing this so that you might understand where I am at in my life, how living here has changed me but kept me the same. I hope that some of you may now get why I message you longing to communicate but have those awkward pauses, or the lack of conversation sometimes on my end.
