Going back

After 8 months of absence, last week I finally made it back to the Netherlands. Part of me was excited for the trip, but to be honest, part of me was not. Instead, I was afraid of confronting my old life. What is it that I feared? Perhaps I was afraid that I would feel a sense of loss when I arrived, that I would be reminded of all that I had there and now don’t. Or perhaps I was afraid that I would not, that this feeling would be completely absent and in its stead would come a realization that I had always been a stranger in this land.

My fears were completely unjustified. The five days that I spent there were joyful with reunions and shared memories, and the only thing that I lacked was time — to revisit all my old haunts, and to see everyone I would have wished to see.

In retrospect, it is hard to understand the source of my fear. Maybe I was projecting the stress I felt during those last months in Maas. The job search, the secret interview trips, the need to resign a job that I loved, the unavoidability of the upcoming goodbyes, the unknowns of life in yet another country, and the inevitable nerves over moving in with someone after over ten years of independence made for a very hard final months. The demands on my time caused me to create distance with many of the people I cared for, and in the end I left without being able to say proper goodbye to many people.

If you know the story of the terrible 32 hours culminating with my arrival in the Netherlands, it may not come as a surprise that my first months there were tinted negatively for me. I saw those stressful hours as a bad omen for my life in the country, and for at least my first year there I was extremely negative about the country, the people, the food, the weather, anything you can name.

This trip was healing, in more than one sense. It allowed me to re-establish my love for the land of my mother, to reiterate bonds of friendship with the people I care for, and to enjoy again many of the things that I had unknowingly missed.

Proost!