The Expat Experience
The moment that my husband and I decided to accept a move to Hong Kong is etched in both of our minds. It was a moment that cleaved our life into a ‘before’ and ‘after’ and as my husband dialled the number of his boss to say we would go, we knew this decision was going to change everything.
We hadn’t asked for a transfer to Hong Kong and it had taken a fair amount of persuading on behalf of my husband’s employer to get us to say yes. Over the course of a month, we had said ‘no’ three times before we finally said ‘yes’. We were living in Sydney, a city that neither of us belonged to and it had taken some years for us to feel settled there. After many years of trying to get pregnant and suffering multiple miscarriages, we finally got pregnant and had a baby - we had endured a difficult and sad period of our life and were now feeling happy. We had bought a family home and for the first time, started to look into the future with some sense of certainty. Our reluctance to disrupt this life we had been looking forward to for so long was palpable, but we are also adventurous in spirit, so when we were forced to give our final decision we had looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and said “let’s do it. If it doesn’t work, we will just come back to Australia”.
That was 13 years ago. Along the way we have experienced the highs and lows of expat life. Initially it was a difficult move. From our carefree life in Sydney where we had space, blue skies and clean air and where we spent time together, we were thrust into a life that involved cramped apartment living in a polluted city where we never saw each other. It was the beginning of a new way of life, one where my husband travelled for the better part of the week, working 14 hour days regardless of where he was. It took some adjusting (I did a lot of crying on the phone) but that elusive “we will just return to Australia if it doesn’t work out” safety net that we thought belonged to us, was not as easy as we expected. Our new life in Hong Kong was not making us happy, but it was difficult to step off the path we found ourselves on. So instead of returning home, we stayed in the expat life, transferred to Singapore and my husband began commuting to Hong Kong for work.
After so many years now of this expat life I can no longer connect with what it must be like to stay in a home country - to buy the family home and actually live in it. To send your children to the school you enrolled them in at birth, knowing that this is where they will stay, along with all of their peers, until they are 18 years old. To live near family. That life scenario feels so remote now that the idea of “going home” elicits a mixture of fear, excitement, anxiety and doubt in me. It no longer feels like a clear option. Rather it seems like a dream version of a life I like to occasionally ponder on.
The arc of the expat experience is one that is shared throughout our community - an initial period of letting go of your old life and adjusting to your new country of residence, the middle years when you feel like you belong equally in a home country and your new life, followed by a tipping point...where you really aren’t sure anymore where you belong and when, or if, you will ever not be an expat. We tell ourselves that when we have had enough “we will just go home” - it is our mental rip cord, our get out of jail free card that we keep in our back pocket incase our circumstances change and we want to go. But can we...? This idea that we can retain a foot in two places, in two very different possible lives has never been called into question more than now. I have lost count of the number of conversations I have had with friends, acquaintances and on social media with expats questioning the life they find themselves in.
Up until February 2020, it was all going swimmingly. Yes, we were away from friends and family whom we loved, but whenever the longing became too much or when the need arose, we would hop on a plane and be there in 24 hours or less. We had signed up to an unspoken expat contract, one where we would accept the downside of living away from family, friends and our home country as long as we could take periodic trips home and travel around the region we now called home. It felt like a fair trade and the ability to travel was the clincher that sealed the deal on this contract. Now the contract is broken and for many of us it has seriously called into question whether staying away continues to be a viable option. How long can you go without seeing your ageing parents? or your nieces and nephews, or missing milestone moments with those you love? The days are turning into weeks and months and in the blink of an eye two years have passed.
What does expat life look like if we can’t travel freely? For most of us the desire to travel is in our DNA and the need to travel is real. We relied on it and so did our family and friends. It was the backbone of our life away. In the past two years we have seen the expat community start to dwindle - no doubt through redundancies and forced departures, but also in no small measure, from those that made the decision themselves - who felt that it was time to walk away from this expat life. Some were planning a move in the next couple of years and decided to just bring it forward, for others it was perhaps a snap decision - a breaking point at a time when we are all stretched very thin.
For those of us that have stayed, the question over the viability of our expat life continues to swirl. Many of us are bringing the “maybe we should think about leaving” statement out in the open, debating it endlessly and trying to make the various jigsaw puzzle pieces fit. For some, like our family, there is no single country that we call home, so which home country would we return to? Where would the kids go to school? Can we even get them into a school at this point? And what about work? Are there jobs for us? Do we actually want to leave? Or are we just sick of dealing with Covid?
As everyone questions the longevity of living away another aspect to expat life has reared its head. What do you do when everyone you know is leaving? The mass exodus seems to be in full swing. As friends start to plan and plot their new lives away from Singapore it can be hard to continue to feel OK about staying. These friendships, that are more like family, are often fractured between those that are going and (the few) that are staying. A negative narrative about the city we call home creeps into the lives of those who have chosen to go - it’s only natural, it’s a way of preparing yourself to say goodbye to the life you once held dear - but it can be hard to stay above these thoughts if you are staying. Feeling frustrated with where you live is a recipe for an unhappy life so it’s important to not be surrounded by too much negative chat.
So what is the answer?
If you are staying, I think it’s important to find a focus and some purpose. To set some goals for the coming year - it doesn’t need to be work focused, but doing some kind of work often helps. I have so many wonderful women who work with me on the magazine - who do it to stay motivated and interested and to keep using their skills - even if they can’t get a work permit, they can participate in something that interests them. I am immensely grateful to them because I crave connection with people on a work basis too. If your friends are leaving, start now to ignite some new friendships - no one will replace the friends that are leaving but you need to fill the space that will be left when they go.
If you are leaving, be gentle with your friends that are staying. Try not to talk too negatively about current life and wax lyrical about where you are moving to. Hang on to each day in Singapore because soon enough it will be over and even if you’ve decided it is no longer what you want, it is here today for you to enjoy.
Despite all the challenges we are currently living through, I am so thoroughly glad that my husband and I took the plunge to move to Hong Kong all those years ago. It was the beginning of our expat experience and whilst it may not have been smooth sailing the whole time, it is the only life I now know and has provided more adventure, variety and friendships than I could have imagined 13 years ago.
Hang in there everybody.
