Looking Back, Moving Forward

Feeling contemplative after returning from my trip to Europe

The Surreal Nature of Transitions and Detachment

Airports act as portals, liminal spaces in which you transition from past to future. They are in-between, cultureless lands where the sad energy of goodbyes mingles with the vibrant, almost frenetic energy of new beginnings and possibilities.

As soon as I touched Japanese soil last week, it felt as if the last five weeks had never happened. It was the same feeling I had after returning to the US for a summer after having lived in Indonesia for nearly four years—as if it had all been just a dream.

Over the last decade of living in various countries, I have developed a certain detachment from both people and places. It’s a coping mechanism, I think, something that allows me to keep moving forward, onto the next thing. In the beginning of semi-nomadic life, the goodbyes were excruciating. I wondered if it would ever get any easier.

Ten years after saying those first heart wrenching goodbyes, I can say that yes, it does.

Was it all just a dream?…

Being Changed by the World and Misunderstood by Home

Moving from one country to the next, exchanging one community and set of experiences for another like shrugging off a well-loved coat for a brand new one has become easier, in part because people rarely ask me about my travels or life abroad. I have heard this echoed by other expats, study-abroad students, and other long-term travelers.

Nobody is ever as interested in your life as you are.

You want to share anecdotes with family who have no frame of reference for your experiences, so they can’t relate to the inner changes you’ve gone through or understand why your values and beliefs have shifted due to the things you’ve seen and lived outside your country of origin. You want to share pictures of your life abroad with friends whose eyes glaze over after about a minute and turn the conversation to complaining about the mundanities of daily life with kids, a husband, and a nine-to-five.

People have their own lives—lives that go on without you there.

So, when you have no one to talk to about all you’ve seen, done, and learned—when there’s no one to help you process the complex emotions of constant farewells, new beginnings and the freedom and loneliness of being untethered—it all begins to fade, as if it never happened.

You change and grow in ways that those who remain rooted in their home country, in their own culture, within the same communities simply don’t. It’s not a judgement, just a difference. Because when you aren’t exposed to cultures different from your own, foreign languages you have to navigate, or societal rules and expectations that go against everything you were raised on, you aren’t being challenged in unfamiliar ways. Staying home means your challenges—raising teenagers, navigating careers—are shared, relatable. There’s a built-in community to commiserate with. But the expat or nomadic path is unconventional. Unless you go out of your way to find like-minded people, you may start to feel isolated, misunderstood. Even resentful.

You want your loved ones to be interested in your life, but unless that life looks closer to a version of one they are familiar with, they may struggle to relate to you. They may expect you to be the same person you were when you left, with the same interests, the same conversational currency. Try as you might to navigate your growth and their disinterest, sometimes the disconnect is just too great and you are left feeling incredibly isolated.

2016 Left everything behind in the US to start a new life in Colombia

2018 The training wheels came off in Bali

Forward Momentum and the Refuge of Airports

One way I have learned to deal with this isolation, whether consciously or not, is to be detached and keep moving forward. I journal about my experiences, then turn the page. I post the photos to my social media, then delete them from my phone. If I start to reminisce too much or indulge in wistfulness and nostalgia, I plan the next trip. It helps to have something to look forward to.

I used to overextend myself trying to maintain long-distance friendships. Now, I let things unfold naturally. If someone is meant to stay in my life, they will. I’ve stopped forcing connections that don’t reciprocate.

This inherent forward momentum is why going back to the places I’ve lived is so difficult. It’s hard to put this feeling into words. (I bet there is a word in German or Welsh to describe it—they’ve got a word for all the most obscure, ineffable feelings).

For one, it’s too painful. For someone who thrives on new experiences, it’s funny how much I hate change. I am a creature of habit. When I find a restaurant I like, even on a short trip, I will continue to go back there, order the same meal, never open the menu. Friends in Bali used to make fun of me because I never left my street. What for? I had everything I needed on a single street: my home, my favorite restaurant, favorite café, favorite bar, favorite club, favorite laundry, favorite beach for sunset.

But if I go back to the places I have lived, they will inevitably be changed—the friends I made will be gone, my favorite bar will be converted to a sad, sub-par hipster café that sells overpriced jackfruit pulled “pork”, rice fields I once loved riding my motorbike through will be paved over and replaced by a villa.

I will be surrounded by the ghosts of memories.

And going back makes it harder to move forward. I am prone to melancholy and nostalgia. Living in the past keeps me from embracing new experiences. You’ve probably heard the phrase: “Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.” It’s usually used in the context of regret. But I say it to remind myself that memories are beautiful, but they shouldn’t keep me from making new ones.

Going back is also very confronting. Sometimes the place itself and the people I left behind haven’t undergone dramatic change, but it provides a backdrop to clearly see just how much I have changed, and the contrast can be too jarring. A place I once fit in now feels alien. Or maybe I am the alien—and that can be hard to reconcile.

2018 View from the San Jose airport in Costa Rica—the last Latin American country I lived in before moving to the Asian continent

That’s why I love airports and airplanes so much.

There are no communities to leave behind in an airport, no memories there that haunt you, no changes or renovations that leave you heartbroken or pining for the past—because you don’t get attached to an airport.

Airplanes don’t fly backwards. They soar headstrong into the horizon—toward possibility, toward what’s next.