Split in half

Home in Dialogue is a collective storytelling platform documenting personal experiences of migration: leaving, returning and in the between. Below you will find Orsi Fábián’s response to the question of how to deal with the feelings of being settled and being on the move at the same time.

I moved to London a year after my Mom died, in 2007. I felt like I had nothing here.. My sister was occupied with her newborn daughter, my friends were all getting their shit together and I felt that I didn’t belong. Also I wanted adventure. It was exactly what I expected. Colourful, glamorous, full of friendly people. Soon I met the father of my children who is an artist full of craziness and narcissism. Just what I needed. I spent ten years there, making new friends, being a full time mom so mainly secluded but having a reasonably good life with a schedule.

I was bored though, I missed my friends and family in Budapest thanks to social media and I felt like I’m just existing without building a future so we decided to buy an apartment in Budapest and we moved back. It is weird but all those years while I was living in London I didn’t rent out my old place in Budapest because I didn’t want to have to rent an AirBnB or crash at my relatives place when we came back to visit, at least that is what I told myself, but I guess in reality I just wanted a safe place that I can always move back to. So as I think back I was always half way back..

Now that we’ve been living here for nearly two years I still have boxes unpacked waiting to be taken somewhere. It’s not that I haven’t found my way here it’s just that I don’t feel like I’m entirely home.. I’m missing my other half.. I made life log friends in London just like I have life long friends here and I miss them every day. I also miss all the little things.. the way to school, the way to the grocery store, the aisles in there, that I know exactly where things are..

People often ask me why I don’t move back then..? It is weird.. My roots are here therefore I guess I can’t imagine putting roots down somewhere else, which I obviously did without realising, and if I think about saving money for the future I don’t see the point in a different country.. Here I have a goal to maybe get an apartment for my kids so they don’t have to worry when they grow up but I know that that would be impossible in London..

Still the boxes are unpacked.. waiting. I feel restless most of the time. I feel like a lego piece that came from the same box so it fits but doesn’t quite click, keeps slipping off.. really annoying..

This question was sent to Orsi Fábián by Eszter Bircsák, whose blog post on returning can be found here. Orsi will now send a question about migration for someone else to answer. We will post this soon on Home in Dialogue.

This model of collective blog posting is inspired by Enrol Yourself’s Learning Marathon, a peer-to-peer learning programme we highly recommend for anyone who has a project they want grow.