The Before //
Before one moves overseas, well-meaning folks would offer well-wishes and advice, words of wisdom they may or may not have tried and tested themselves. You would've had the time to psych yourself for the big move, preparing logistics, mapping out the most efficient route to an unfamiliar address which you'll soon commit to memory and which you'll later grow accustomed to calling "home", at least to your new friends.
And as much as possible, you would've mentally prepped yourself. You get to prepare yourself for the unknown, and somehow expecting the unknown makes the actual unknown a bit easier to deal with.
The First Return Home //
But no one can prepare you for the sense of uncanny familiarity that greets you when you return back home, especially when you've built a second one somewhere else. While it feels like a warm hug, it feels like one from a stranger–incredibly unnerving.
It's unnerving because it's the familiarity despite. Despite how different I feel, it's so easy to fall back into the same routines–knowing how to cut across the road before the green man comes on because you can predict the traffic light's timing, diving straight into the snacks aisle of your local supermarket (the one you used to spend most of your post-work evenings in) and going back to volunteering on Friday evenings helping to write letters to government bodies on issues plaguing the average Singaporean, issues that feel so far from my own reality (and this time, not referring to it in a privileged way, though I hundred percent am).
The most unnerving of it all? The immediate realization coming back from abroad that there's now a part of me that'll never feel familiar to the folks back home. And the fact that they don't see it. To them, 'you haven't changed!', 'wah thank goodness no accent', 'no European air eh!' While I'm glad I didn't seem foreign to my friends and loved ones, it was quite a bit to deal with on my own, feeling like I needed to reconcile these two 'versions' of me.
The Invisible Growth //
It was also a strange phenomenon because in Dublin, I didn't feel like I'd changed at all. In fact, there were moments in the past year where I questioned my decision to uproot myself completely from a place where I had everything going for me, and it wasn't because things got challenging. Instead, it all felt too easy–so much so that I wondered if I was truly going to get the dramatic "personal growth" I'd envisioned getting by moving abroad.
Yet, returning back to Singapore made Dublin feel like a complete dream. Not in a rainbows-and-butterflies-kinda-way, but in a 'did that even happen?' way, because that version of myself felt so far away. That version of myself felt different: the one that had a newfound sense of independence, the one that takes control of her social life and not let it be dictated by obligations, the one that has a decent work-life balance.
These were changes or little growth areas I'd never noticed till I relegated back to my other self in Singapore–and I'd argue not because of a lack of responsibility, but a shift back to old circumstances. At least, moving has shown me what's possible.
The Leaving Home Again //
And with visiting home, comes the need to leave it again. This time I left really knowing what to expect–there no longer was that sense of adventure or novelty anymore. Because I moved abroad for work, it also felt like I was returning to the place I associated with back-to-back meetings, sending emails, and a good amount of workplace shenanigans.
As much as I do enjoy aspects of my job, there's no denying that sense of dread that comes with settling into the plane seat you'd be trapped in for the next fourteen hours and knowing you'd have to to go into the office jet-lagged the next day. That's not even counting the emotional aspect of it all: it gets even harder to leave home the second time, not knowing when's the next time you'll be seeing the people you left behind.
At some point, I'll be back home for good. When that happens, I can't wait for my two selves to merge into one best self–obviously not a given, but I'm prepared to put in the work. Till then, I'll continue to chase all the growth I can get, in every aspect of my life but particularly in my personal sense of self.
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