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Becoming an 'ex' expat

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11/09/2009Becoming an 'ex' expat

American expat Elise Krentzel expresses her fears and expectations about repatriating in two blog posts.

Expats on the job hunt back home

May: Going away
Well it’s moving time. Again! This is the 41st in my life. This is the biggie because I’m repatriating with a Dutch husband and a child who has grown up in Holland. I’m going away after 13 years here and 5-plus in Switzerland.

Everyone says to me I’ll fit right in. It’s home. I feel I will without a doubt. Mom is there as are childhood friends from elementary school that only this year after 30 years and then some did we reconnect. To bagels and the Sunday Times (although frankly I only read the Travel & Entertainment section and the magazine), to people that yap and are in-your-face yet very sincere and dramatic sometimes. To a place where friendliness is second nature and yet abrupt when necessary. To “my people” because a community is a place where you feel welcomed.

Having tried most of my life to belong I finally found out what belonging really means. To belong is to be longing. To long for something lost or never found. To live in a space that doesn’t entirely accept the now. To be longing to belong has left me on the outside of what I sought. Now I am being. There is no longing. That is what fitting in means. In one’s self.

New York, JKF Airport: Waiting more than 1 hour for United States Immigration control

Yet going away from our friends, family, shitty weather, rude Dutchies, yummy raw haring, cool architecture, nice relaxed city, crazy bike riders who don’t give a f… if you’re walking, a child, a disabled person etc, polders and all their models, slips and sliptong, sluices and mud flats, Heineken and the Amstel River, Vondelpark and fond memories. You want more?

July: The karma of moving abroad
It’s the last day of packing. I’m sitting in a 75 percent empty house as the movers remove the last items. It gives me a calm feeling to watch them work furiously. They’re wrapping, sorting, sticking, packing, designing crates, hammering nails, seeing the elevator go up and down with our belongings and finally loading the container. I am at peace with our decision and am standing in the empty space between worlds.

I am ready to venture to the place I was born yet do not know intimately. How can anyone prepare for repatriation shock? You can read about it, understand mentally that “things are not the way you left them” yet how it will affect ME is a mystery. Yet there’s one thing I’m sure of. I can be a safe haven for my husband who has never lived outside of Holland.

At LaGuardia airport (New York)

It is only now, twelve years later that I see how those first disruptive complaining years in Amsterdam have imprinted upon my partner. He must have experienced cross-cultural relocation as something negative and difficult. What he didn’t see was how I managed in Japan or France -- the me who was in sync with both cultures, whose social life resonated heartfelt in both those places.

I feel sorry for that. My skewed experience relayed the message that moving was an isolating, unfriendly, often boring drudgery. Yet it isn’t. When and if my husband finds the challenges of life in New York impossible to fathom or if he feels lonely and misunderstood, I will be his soft shoulder, his sounding board and friend.

No matter how tiring or frustrating I may feel I make this vow to him. Because he underwent the same type of hardship with me. This is karmic work. I will play my part lovingly.

Elise Krentzel / Expatica

Photos credit: scalleja; Lauri Väin

1 reaction to this article

robert posted: 2009-09-16 13:26:49

Good luck Elise, I'm not sure if I could go back to England very easily. Its so safe and clean here in Germany and the breads great. In fact I do not really harmonise with the German culture but to leave it .........I don't know!

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