Repatriating Part 1: Starting a Career

I've been back in the States for three years now, which is incredibly hard to believe.  It really doesn't seem like I've been home for that long.  It's easy to say that for the last two years, I have been suffering with depression.  It's caused by a culmination of many things, but for the most part, it's from the complete loneliness of moving home and being completely un-relateable to the majority of the people I'm surrounded by.

When you spend years living abroad, it changes something within you.  I came back and everything was the same.  But I was different.  It happened every time, which is why I kept leaving and finding somewhere else to go.

My first move overseas was to Scotland the year I graduated college.  I had a six-month visa to live and work in the UK.  I was working at a hotel in the Highlands, pretty secluded, and my boss was an absolute nutter.  Combine that with your best friends saying how much they missed you and wanted you to come home, I quit my visa after four and a half months and went home.  I was expecting this grand welcoming with my friends inquiring about my trip and what it was like in Scotland.  I was expecting to couple-up with this guy I had been in love with.  I was expecting a lot more than, "hey, you're home, that's cool...".  It was in that moment that I realized what I'd lost: An opportunity to do something that no one I knew (or still know from home) will ever have...an opportunity to explore the world and myself and fill a void that most of my girlfriends fill with marriage and babies.  (not meaning any offense by that...most girls love babies, some prefer plane tickets).  It was in that moment that I decided that was the last time I'd do anything because of someone else.  It was in that moment that I became selfish.

The first time I moved abroad and my family came to visit.  They don't visit me anymore.

It's a funny thing, coming home.  Nothing changes.  Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same.  You realize what's changed is you.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fast forward 13 years and 25 countries later.  I moved back for many reasons.  First and foremost, I needed to let my leg fully heal...I just needed to rest.  Second, there was 100% no fulfillment in my career as a teacher working in a system that doesn't value you, but know's you're more than replaceable if you don't agree with how things work.  Third, I was (am) finally ready to give my heart to someone, something that apparently is less than likely to occur - wait, scratch that - I have given out my heart, I just haven't received one back...I am an expert at unrequited love.

For length's sake, I'll just focus on one of those reasons for moving back in this blog: My career.

I now have a job that I love.  I love it.  I feel like I finally have a purpose and I'm doing something that makes a difference, all while challenging me and expanding my knowledge daily.  And because of that, I have no plans to leave.  However, while my career has settled, my social life has become non-existent, which I'm blaming more and more on my previous life as an Expat.

You see, I can talk Travel all day long.  Where I've been, where I plan to go, where you've been and are planning to go...what it's like to enjoy a bowl of noodles in a hawker in Singapore, or what the ancient stones that make up Angkor Wat feel like under your fingers.  Traveling is my passion, it awakens my soul.  But I can't talk about it anymore.  Because where I live, the people don't understand it, and I almost get the sense that they feel like I'm pretentious and trying to make them jealous.  I'm not.  Traveling is just...me.  It's who I am and what I know and I love to encourage others to get out there.

Where I am now, I just can't talk about the places and feelings I've experienced, because I've learned that most people I know respond negatively to that, and I've isolated myself, becoming a mere shell of the person I am.  Detached and surviving.

Travel, when undertaken habitually, becomes a potent intoxicant...The more you do it, the more you find a way to keep doing it.  It becomes vital to the system.
- Josh Gates, Memoirs of a Monster Hunter

That quote, as I'm sure anyone who travels will tell you, is spot on.  Travel is vital to my system.  I booked an impromptu trip last month to Peru, after a rough month at work and my depression deepening to the point of insanity and mental breakdowns.  I had a great time and felt happy again.  But when I got back, I realized that trips now just act like Band Aids, covering a deep crevasse of a wound that feels like it's never going to heal.  The Peru Band Aid lasted only a few days, before it fell off leaving the wound festering and bleeding for everyone to see.

I yearn for views like this. 
Cusco, Peru

I came home from Peru with the newest edition of National Geographic Traveler in my mailbox and immediately started "Oooh-ing" and "Awweee-ing" while thumbing through the pages.  There's an article on Scandinavia, which I immediately squealed that I need to go back, to Norway this time.  Norway will have to wait, though, purely because it's one of the most expensive countries in the world and I should probably get the cheap ones out of the way first.

So, to my friends here, I honestly try not to bother you about my adventures unless you ask...but it's definitely a struggle not to bring up my preference for papaya salad when you say you want Pad Thai for lunch.  To my international friends, the connections I've made: Let's meet up!  In a coffee shop in Bavaria, or at Petra, the Taj Mahal, or Chichen Itza.  I'm down for whatever, just tell me if I need a jacket :)

Happy Trails!