The sadness and joy of emigration…
I have a friend who loves to call me, often, twice daily at a minimum, and she tries as much as is possible to do this when I am on a crowded commuter train, into the lovely city we live in. We have the kind of friendship where we don’t even say “Hello” we just launch into whatever is on our minds. She never asks where I am, loves to say outrageous things, which get more outrageous when she realises that I am sitting on the train. She knows this by my responses being reduced to just saying “Uh, huh.” My commute offers her a chance to talk and me to listen, but today was different…
She emigrated about 6 years ago. I emigrated 13 years ago. Emigration is a decision that is both wonderous and deeply sad at the same time. She was sad, as she has a group of close friends and one of them got married on the weekend. As much as she tried to juggle her responsibilities, she could not work a trip into her schedule, so her friend’s wedding continued without her. I was sitting on the train while she wailed and moaned about the fact that it felt like they had an enormous history together, but the longer she was away, the more shared history she missed out on. I could hear how much it hurt her. I could not just do an “Uh, huh.” To those people who heard me on the train, I am not a fruit loop, you only heard half the conversation…
In my view, emigrating is like witnessing your own death. I know that sounds melodramatic, but the space that you took up at home, closes. It cannot remain open, neither for you or for the people you leave behind. Are you remembered fondly? Well, you hope so, but just as your life goes on, so does everyone else’s that you left behind. It is very hard though, to be looking back at the space that you used to occupy and realise that it has closed. People do talk about you, they definitely miss you, but the person you were when you left is no longer there. When you do go back, even though the space you occupied opens up again, it can be an incredible different space to fit into. While you were gone, your experiences and the processes have changed who you are, your perceptions have changed and the “space” that you used to occupy is no longer the same “shape” as you. You have picked up new cultural norms, attitudes and experiences, you no longer have the same context on jokes, politics and sport, your favourite biscuits even taste different! Emigration reminds me of how we speak of the “dearly departed,” my grandmother passed away 10 years ago, she is spoken of fondly when the family gets together, but her history is capped at where she was when she left us. While I am miles away overseas, I imagine my mother and father having similar “remember when…” conversations, but they are no longer steeped in the present, they are stated in the past. To some extent we are frozen in time. There is the “then” but the “now” they cannot see or be part of. It does get tiresome, being a voice on the end of the phone on special days, the email, the letter or the birthday card. It is hard for both parties.
We were musing on whether it gets better with time. My theory on that is that it gets harder. In the beginning, you are in love with your new home, the freedom, the adventure, the newness of your experience, but when the gloss is gone, you do see the loss more. It is an enormously personal choice. When I first left with the wave of emigrants who left the country, I was pretty gung-ho about it. If anyone asked me, “Should I do it?” I think I probably looked at them and would have done a “Duh? Of course!” Now I would be much more circumspect. You need to know what you are leaving behind, you need to know that you and others will be changed by your choice, you need to know that as successful and as happy you will be, you will sometimes yearn for the person you were before you made the choice. Hopefully, as with everything in life, you will look at what you have learnt and how you have grown and be proud that you have accomplished what is a difficult task.
To everyone who grapples with being the leaver or the stayer, lots of love and light…
I relate to the concept of death…. the void. I remembered when I emigrated someone explained to me that she felt like she had just gone through a holocaust, she said everyone she knew was no longer there and she felt like she was in mourning. I recall when I moved I used to feel like I was on Mars with a cell phone. My first month I sent 550 sms messages and I was fed and held by a precious soul in Africa. I have, over the past 7 years, forgotten who I was, forgotten who I am. I only see the glimpses of me when I phone a kindred soul who is still able to hold onto the history of who I am. It seems that in the process of adapting to an environment without your referral team to reflect who you are, you can forget. And… alienation from yourself is the worst from of isolation. I am now in the process of creating a new history with a new friend. I now have a reflection again. She feels very familiar but she does not know all of who I am, as I am expressing ‘me’ from within a void, without the audience of family and friends – without the history of time. I wonder what form I will settle into over time and I wonder how close that will be to the 38 years of the Me who lived in her country of birth. I wonder if it is not only true that it takes a village to raise a child but also that it takes a village to support a parent and hold a grandparent. What will we do when there are no more villages left?
Very interesting question on the village. Perhaps it does take a village to hold a person, not only in childhood, but into adulthood. Our village has become virtual. Even if you lived in SA, it does not necessarily mean your village would have remained around you. Perhaps, we have to take the bits of the village and create the best support network we can?
And another point to ponder…does anyone know everything about who we are? Or do they hold slices of ourselves? Do some people even hold bits of ourselves that we cannot see or have not wanted to see? I do believe that as we grow and develop, the old adage “that when the student is ready, the teacher appears” – is very true. Do the people we need always appear just at the very right time?
Beautifully said Tanya, you made me realise things that I had not thought of- or perhaps not dared to?. To continue the analogy,it is a little death, and a rebirth too into a new country where you are a child taking baby steps in a new culture, learning new names, making new friends but without parental guidance and support. I think my emigration was easier than yours, my SA family were all far away to start with, and older than me so I did not miss the weddings, babies etc . In addition I had a ready made family to step into here. But still, to steal from Neil Diamond “Mauritius is fine but it’s not home, Jo’burg’s home but it ain’t mine no more”
What about the fact that our children grow up foreigners? That, I think for me, is in some ways the hardest part, perhaps because they are foreigners twice, in our land of birth, and in theirs, with their mixed accents and languages, and split heritage. Maybe though in a global world this is an advantage.
Anyway, the choice has been made, and given the state of SA cannot be undone, so we live how we can, and thank the gods of internet and mobile phones that we are not completely dead to those who were left behind.
Its really hard, and I think its worse than death. I think emmigrating is like divorce, People miss you, sometimes hate you for leaving, amd there are many mixed emotions. What I find hard are the few that have cut themselves off from us, as though we have become the enemy. Maybe we aare a reminder of the problems they face every day and have to deal with while we dont.
I feel awful for leaving Mom=in=law behind, as she cant see her family every day.
We all move on and recreate ourselves all the time, but roots are what gave you your first look at yourself and all the rest are based on that.Its been a bittersweet one year anniversary since we left, thats for sure.
I agree with you that in the beginning it is new and exciting and life is wonderful; then parents and friends get ill or need help or go through crises and you are thousands of miles away unable to be a physical presence. And their lives move on without you, just as yours moves on without them. You can never accurately fill the space you left behind, and by moving forward you have to make the sacrifice to be the person you choose. And it sounds a real cliche, but the ones that really matter really care. Emigrating has never been for the faint of heart, it takes an enormous reserve of courage and conviction to make the move and to start your life all over again in a different place. You have no history, no connection, no bond to your new place until you create it for yourself. It’s kind of like turning the page of a book and finding a blank, fresh, crisp slate waiting to be filled. On the one hand, that’s awesome – on the other, very daunting. Our old memories are the touchstones we leave for our children, so that they can know their roots; the new ones we create together are what their children can remember.
Yes, they do. And sometimes they leave when no longer needed; such is the ebb and flow of life.
I think I have hit our “wound”! Anniebananie, I agree so much with the excitement of the new page, but also the anxiety of it. Janine, Neil Diamond song is so true – “I am, I said” – it is one I have often sung when I am homesick and trying to make sense of it all. In fact, homesick is even the wrong word, because I do see Australia as home. It is more “mesick” when I miss myself in the context of my old home.
Lisa, I love the divorce analogy. I have always thought of it as “witnessing” my death, but that is another really good one, because people do get grumpy with you!
As humans we strive to belong to a community and the community of family and close friends is a strong one. But at the same time we put a boundary around this community and feel alienated once we step outside the boundary. Whether this is in the form of loss, guilt, loyalty or whatever it affects both those in and out of the boundary. Emigration seems such a conclusion, finalisation, divorce or whatever you want to call it but it’s that cognisant step out of the boundary that affects us most, like that’s it, I’m out of here, never coming back, I can’t be part of the community if I live in xyz. But the fact is we all move in and out of the boundary all the time without realising it. The world is so different now to what it used to be. Years ago when our grandparents left their countries, it was final, it was goodbye. The chances of a quick return visit, or the regular daily or weekly phone call, or even regular e-mail was not possible. The expense and time to travel was an obstacle and the infrastructure just wasn’t there. But today is so different yet in our minds we still place these barriers. It so easy just to pick up the phone, sms, email, skype, video call or even just jump on the next available flight. But we come back to this boundary thing we set for ourselves and placed ourselves outside. Facebook is a good example, when I first started getting invitations, suddenly I started reconnecting with friends and family I had long forgotten about, and everyone I connected with had a long list friends I knew or once were friends with. They were part of my community, part of my space, part of my life but somehow they just slipped out without me noticing. Or did I slip out without them noticing? This happened long before I moved to Australia so emigration didn’t play a role but I didn’t think about them again until they came up in Facebook and I was left wondering what happened? We were such good friends, how could they have just moved on without me noticing? Some of them still lived in the neighbourhood, I just didn’t see them anymore. Now you might think this is different to emigration and it is in a way because nobody said they were leaving, they just left. There was no finality, no closure, just a quiet departure. Whether they intended to re-join the community or not is immaterial but emigration is different because we deliberately step over the boundary and say goodbye. This is just my humble opinion and as much as I would like to say the world has made it so much easier to just expand our boundary and never say goodbye, I know in my heart it’s just doesn’t work that way. Moving from one town to another in the same country is just a shift in the boundary, but it seems boundaries don’t extend over sea. Emigration doesn’t need to be final, it doesn’t need to be a step out of the boundary, but as humans we make it so.
Lovie that’s deep xx