The Ides of March

Here we are in the Ides of March, and it’s the Ides of Ex-pat Angst.

It’s the season where many among us who live abroad have decided to move on, but now find the abyss of the unknown gaping before us.

It was not an abyss six months ago, when horizons were broad and sunny, possibilities were endless, and we were itching for a change.  Whether it’s our insatiable wanderlust, or the inescapable pull homeward to our roots, or (in most cases), a combination of the two, we are people on the move, and it’s time to go.

Or rather, it was time to go.  But now that the work of actually going is upon us, we find ourselves floundering in uncertainty and upheaval.  We are selling our things.  We are looking for work.  We are trying to imagine a life that is different from the life we now lead.  And we can’t.  We have no hook on which to hang our dreams.  What we have is a big, unending void, and a quest without a map.

At the same time, we are grieving the life that has become normal for us here.  We are thinking of the people we have not seen since they, too, stepped into the void.  We are thinking of the people we may never see again after we have left.  We are thinking of sunny Saturday mornings, playing soccer in our pyjamas with the neighbour’s kids; moments of unparalleled collegiality with our co-workers; periods of venting, whining, and laughing about the obstacles that spoiled, first-world travellers feel unequipped to face, even after years of incremental adjustments. We are thinking of the things we haven’t yet done, and will likely not get to, as our time here closes in on us.  We are all thinking, “No one who hasn’t lived here can ever truly understand us again.”  This place has changed us.  We are not leaving as we came.  Our very identities are in flux.

Most pressing, for most of us, is the mundane but overwhelming pressure to support ourselves after our four remaining paycheques run out.  A very few of us have already secured employment in some new and unfamiliar location, and are in the throes of preparing for the move.  But most of us are facing the very real threat of unemployment, and it’s a terrible, terrible feeling.

We are not young graduates just beginning our careers.  Many of us are mid-career, middle-aged, experienced professionals, finding ourselves in the Ides of Life, overqualified for entry-level jobs that are going to people half our age.  We see people not so very much older than us preparing to retire on full pensions.  Some of us have families to provide for or financial obligations in our home countries.  We cannot just step into a life of not being here, but not being anywhere else either.  And despite the fact that we have continued to pay taxes in our home countries, our protracted absence has cut us off from the social services we have paid into throughout our careers.

There is a constant murmur among us.  When we see each other in passing, we ask, delicately, if there have been any developments in the job search, and we sympathize with one another’s responses.  Some of us have not had a single bite; others have had leads that have fallen through.  Some are in that hopeful, anxious phase in between the interview and the follow-up.  But we all relate to one another.  In our best moments, we cheer one another on.  In our worst, we despair together.  And in our very, very worst, we despair alone.

“Don’t worry.  You’ll find something.”  That’s what people say to us all the time.  Oh, how easy it is for others to have faith on our behalf! But even the “something” that we are poised to find is undefined.  “Something” is not always a positive word.

So if you see us, zombie-eyed, pivoting on our own futures, give us a little love.  If you’ve been there, and made it to the other side, send us your advice.  If you’re staying here, relieved to be in a stable situation for another year at least, take us out for dinner and remind us that we still have a life here to enjoy and people to support us.  And if you stayed put when we sailed forth however many years ago, and can’t relate at all to the unique experience of living between two worlds, offer us a welcome back to yours, and an embrace upon our return.

We are in the Ides of March, the Ides of Life, the Ides of Hope.  Walk through it with us.  We need you.