Life After Living Abroad

Lyssie

8 years ago

There are plenty of travel blogs out there where people talk about quitting their jobs and moving abroad, maybe never coming back. But what about someone like me, who quit my job to move abroad for a year and then returned home?

Life After Living Abroad

I’ve been living in the past since I returned to the United States after my fairy tale year living in Southern Spain in 2014-2015. I post old pictures on my social media accounts, send my Spanish friends Christmas cards every December, and check Snapchat to see what my Spanish students are up to. It’s been over a year since I got back physically, but mentally I’m still there. I’m going through the motions of living back home, but I’m not really here.

Challenges of Returning Home

Post-expat depression is a real thing! It's hard to transition back to life before living abroad. Click To Tweet Even though nothing at home has changed, I have changed (and no one else has). I know what’s out there now and I know what I’m missing. I’d adapted to a different way of life and then had it ripped away from me. I was just getting good at speaking Spanish and learning the lay of the land…and now I haven’t been back since. Probably the only people who could understand what I mean are people who have lived abroad, had their eyes opened to the rest of the world, and come back to find nothing has changed, but they’re too worldly now to fit in to that old lifestyle. After returning home from living abroad, I learned nothing changed but me. Click To Tweet

It’s difficult to accept that my new life is my old life. I miss a lot of things about living abroad, things I didn’t even know I wanted until I had them. I enjoyed the simple living of Spain, walking to the neighborhood market to buy fresh food just brought in off the farm, sitting outside talking to neighbors, wandering down to the local bar for a drink and fútbol (soccer) game, and watching kids pass the time together in the park. Back in New Jersey, life after living abroad is fast-paced, everything is driving distance away, everything is expensive, the food is mass-produced and frozen, and everyone yells at each other.

What Am I Doing Now?

So what happens after an expat returns home? I’m a planner, so I had a plan for when I returned. I was going to work my summer job and go back to grad school in the fall. Success on both accounts. I’m lucky enough to have a summer job that I’ve had for the past 13 years, so teaching English abroad fit nicely into that schedule and allowed me to work both surrounding summers without missing a beat. Last fall, I enrolled in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University to become a school counselor; after teaching English abroad, I decided my future life after living abroad lies in education and helping future generations become more culturally aware of the world as I was living abroad.

My second summer in the U.S. after living abroad I went back to my summer job again and am about to start year two of full-time graduate school. I hope to graduate in the spring with my Master’s in Counseling Psychology with a certificate in School Counseling. Then, I have a decision to make: do I go back for one more year abroad before I settle down and get a full-time job, or do I jump into helping young minds become the best they can be?

How to Cope

Each day, the memory of living abroad gets a little dimmer. I talk about it a little less. I become a little more acclimated to American life again. I’ll never forget my experience and I continue to live it through other travel blogs, but it almost seems like an amazing dream now.

My life after living abroad is mostly depressed, anxious, and I am always looking forward to my next adventure. Even when I’m on vacation somewhere, I find myself searching for flights for my next trip. Searching for the best deal helps me cope with being a national again, even if I don’t ever actually go on the trips.

Taking quick trips helps me cope with life after living abroad too. Whether it’s exploring my own backyard, taking a quick domestic flight somewhere nearby like Niagara Falls or Florida, or booking a solo international trip like Iceland (in November – yay!), it makes me feel like I’m at least getting out there. I’ve tried to go somewhere at least once every month or two, and so far it’s working and gives me something to look forward to.

Staying in touch with the friends I made while living abroad helps me relive our great adventures and lets me know I’m not alone in my post-expat depression of life after living abroad. Keeping in touch with friends in Australia, Spain, France, and even right here in the U.S. helps me cope. Also, connecting with other travel bloggers and following their travels, expat lives, or past experiences also help.

Finally, treating everywhere I go like a new adventure helps me believe even my hometown is a new travel destination. I try to act like a tourist everywhere I go, whether it’s photographing a popular tourist sight, going on a bike ride to a new part of the town or city, getting a hotel room, or doing a city tour, I can pretend I’m a tourist exploring a new place. Maybe my pictures aren’t as exciting as castles and waterfalls, but New Jersey is still a tourist destination to someone somewhere.