Loss

Life lately has been a series of losses. Some bigger than others but life as an expat feels like a billion little heartbreaks. As I’ve written about before, living in a transient city you make friends fast but just as quickly as you form a bond, off they go to the next destination. Most people aren’t here for a long time. 2 years is a long placement here. (I'm jealous of those people at times and at other times I can't imagine being stuck here that long) Since you are arriving at different times, you can feel like you are just settling in and forming relationships that are remotely meaningful when the next thing you know you are at their going away party. The worst part is often you don’t have any notice. You think you will be spending the rest of your time here with someone who was meant to be here long past the time you leave and poof, they lose their job or move on for some other reason.


Certainly I have not made a great deal of meaningful relationships. There is a handful of people that I will stay in touch with and perhaps one or two that I will ever see again in my life. But is that going to stop you from being in the moment and caring about people? Of course not. That would be such a waste of this moment. However, as you meet people you go through the usual questions to each other, what do you do here, where are you from, how long are you here for. It gets old fast. What is exciting is when you stop having those conversations and just fall into one that is more like friendship than a bad first date. I was at one friend’s going away party and met a guy, I asked him when he was here till and he said next week. I apologized and told him I didn’t want to get to know him. It’s too hard, and annoying to go through the small talk for nothing. In retrospect, I may have missed out on a super cool dude (probably not, but for the purposes of making my point here, he may have been the key to me making millions, who knows).

But if you go along protecting yourself from feeling loss, you miss out on so much. I know that sounds so very cliche like “it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all” but it really is true. The deeper you experience love for someone or something, the greater the loss. You can’t feel one without the other. It can be incredibly painful but would you want to live a life of not feeling either? So in addition to these little heartbreaks of constantly saying goodbye to the connections I make here, I also am experiencing a big loss back home. My dog (and my dad's dog- it was a sort of time share), the love of my life was put down while I was here. I am aware that my parents would only have made this choice because it was the best option. But it was awful to not say goodbye. It is awful to love something and lose it. Period. But would I take back caring about something so much so it didn’t hurt so much now? Of course not, life is about feeling all our emotions to the fullest.


And then there are the people I work with here. Uhhhg. That is going to be difficult as well. Let me take you back 4 months to when I arrived. As my predecessor and trainer took me around introducing me to the people she worked with she also was saying her goodbyes. Well every time she said her spiel about enjoying working with them and goodbye, I CRIED. She didn’t, I did. Obviously I am going to be a mess 6 weeks from now. Embracing feeling to the fullest at the cost of a billion little heartbreaks. A small price to pay, really. And who knows what’s around the corner....


“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings” - Lao Tzu

I love this dude so much.