Rachel, There and Back Again
My name is Rachel. I’m a friend of Sarah’s, have been for a long time. I’m not a geeky wife, but I’d consider myself fairly geeky and I guess one day I might be a wife so maybe that counts. Oh, and I’m Australian. That detail might be important, I suppose.
Anyway. Minor biographical details out of the way. I’ve been asked to share with you some of my experiences. From August last year to February of this year I lived in Canada, working at Starbucks and hanging out with Christine, who might also become a special international contributor to this blog at some later point in time. Why? Well, mostly because I could. I had left my job for various reasons, the new university course I wanted to do didn’t start til March, so I had six months to fill. I had some savings, and itchy feet, so to speak. And I had friends I wanted to meet. So off I went.
The thing about doing something like that is that before you leave, everyone wants to give you advice. Things you have to see. Warnings about falling in love with the locals and never coming home along with several stories they know of individuals who have done exactly that. Warnings it will be cold. I got a lot of this. But I remember one conversations in particular. And old friend I hadn’t seen for many years said that I had to ‘find myself’. ‘You’ve got to go out there and find yourself, Rachel’. I smiled politely and nodded. Internally, my mind joked ‘I’m going off to find myself. If you see me before I get back, let me know where I’ll be’. It sounded trite and stupid and frankly, I hadn’t seen this person for years, who did she think she was giving me advice?
Don’t you hate when people are right?
Of course it’s not as simple as ‘finding yourself’. But living in another country does teach you things. It teaches you to be independent for a start. As a girl who still lives with her parents, living on the other side of the world was a real eye opener. I was able to look after myself, to cope when I broke my arm and had roommate issues and was broke. Sure, there was an occasional tearful phone call home, but for the most part I was able to function as a useful member of society. I was person who was more than someone’s sister, or daughter, or granddaughter. I was just me, and it was great.
So what is it like when you come home? Well, it’s rough. Someone explained it to me really well. You come back, and you realise that you’ve changed, but no one else has. Life here has ticked on without you and doesn’t realise you might be a totally different person now. After a few days at home, when the jetlag had cleared, it was almost like the whole thing didn’t happen. The issues I had left behind hadn’t resolved themselves. The things that annoyed me about here that I didn’t have to face in Canada were still here to annoy me.
It worried me a bit at first. I liked who I had become in Canada; was that person about to abandon me?
Thankfully, I’ve realised that you can’t change the people around you. You can’t just run away and hope things will be better when you come back. That would be silly. But what I have realised is that because I have changed, my reaction to what is going on around me can be different. I can try to change my attitude. It’s not easy. I would be lying if I said it was. But I can try to be a little more patient, a little more accepting and a little more forgiving. Because if I want to stay that happy sane person I was when I was away, it’s not everyone around me who has to do it.
My sincere thanks to Rachel for being willing to write a guest post. I had nothing for today and was excited when this popped up in my inbox! Do you want to contribute? Drop me a comment 