P-Funk

Hello to all BE users! This is my first post. I have been browsing the 'Moving back to the UK' forum over the past week, and have found many very helpful and reassuring posts on several threads. I have been living in Hong Kong for the past 21 months, so it is not really very long to have been away from the UK, but so much has happened in that time that it feels like a LOT longer.

Over the past two weeks I have become increasingly unsettled and insecure and, with only three weeks left in Hong Kong, it feels set to continue. My thoughts and feelings are very polarised and can change from one hour to the next -- all very unsettling at an already unsettling time. However, my entire time here could be characterised by this experience of extremes. There has been very little in-between.

All of our personal experiences of living abroad are so very different, but the one thing we have in common (obviously) is that we all want to go home. I have long struggled with notions of home, belonging and identity.

My questions to those of you who have returned home to the UK:
Do you feel you are home now? Do you feel 'at home'? Has moving home served up a (greater/ better) sense of belonging? Do you feel more 'grounded' at home?

If any of you would care to share your reflections on any one or more of the above questions, I'd be most grateful. I need all the perspective I can get here! Many thanks in advance

curleytops

Hi and welcome to BE. I returned to England after spending 45 years, most of my childhood and my entire adult life away. During that time I experienced difficulty with all the things you mentioned - notions of home, belonging and identity in that I knew Canada would never be home to me and that I didn't really belong and I felt that to assimilate I had to be something I wasn't. I'll never know what the ultimate effect on my personality was as we all change over time and our life experiences have a great deal to do with that. I came home to marry a childhood friend, someone I knew from my first class at school. He remembers me in those early days as a vivacious, outgoing little "organizer" always surrounded by lots of friends in the schoolyard. I remember myself as I was after moving to Canada as a shy, introverted loner always feeling like an outsider. I realise looking back now that I actually was as my husband remembers me in the old days. I spent a very long time trying to be someone I wasn't and I can't tell you how good it feels just to be me again. Yes, I feel I am home at last and like myself again. I feel a passion and patriotism for England that I never felt toward my adopted country. I miss my family in Canada and of course I think of them all the time but I really don't dwell on the place I left behind. I've nothing against Canada but it never was home and I can honestly say I didn't feel anything as I boarded the plane to leave after all those years. I can only speak for myself and you may very well get different perspectives from others as you yourself will have your own experience. Good luck with your move home, you'll be back before you know it.

windsong

I've been in the USA 30-some years and don't like it - never did. I learned to exist here but nothing more. I never wanted to come here in the first place but accompanied my mother when she remarried because, if I had stayed behind, there would have been no one left there. Now that she and my stepfather have passed on, I have no relatives here and, for all intents and purposes, none left in the UK either. Ask what my biggest regret is in life - you have the answer I left behind a terrific career, one I was unable to find in the USA. Granted, I got a terrific job here but it became my life for many years. There was no personal life at all and, in fact, a personal life still doesn't exist here. I suppose the USA is okay if it is all you know but it is not for me.

I have always felt like an outside here. I have survived more or less alone here, other than some superficial acquaintances.

Almo

No, I don't feel at home. I feel less unhappy now than I did in Jan/Feb (when I was very, very unhappy) but I don't feel comfortable, like I belong or like I am back 'home'. I am content (ish) to build a life here for the next few years but beyond that I don't know. Equally, I know that where I left wasn't perfect either. My career has been limited by the move back and I am unsure how this is going to pan out for me. Possibly quite badly, career wise, and most worryingly, this could limit my ability to successfully emigrate again in the future (in terms of finding work. I am lucky enough to have a few countries in which I can legally live and work and it would only be those to which I would emigrate).

It hasn't been all bad, of course, and it's not a black and white thing but it's been tougher than I expected it to be.

P-Funk

Thank you very much for your considered replies, curleytops, Windsong and Almo. Yes, indeed, each individual experience of moving abroad, staying abroad and moving home is so personal. It is fascinating to read your stories, condensed as they are into such neat and brief summaries. As always, it's often the detail that is not in a story that can tell us most, and I am well aware that our lives are very complex and full, so by necessity on this type of forum, we have to omit many of the facts and observations that have led us to where we are now - geographically, physically and mentally. I wonder how our perceptions of the reality and meaning of 'going home' and 'being (at) home' might change over the next months and years.

So far, these terms you have used strike me: assimilate, belonging, (not) comfortable, survived, regret (I have several about moving here), identity, trying to be someone I wasn't, content(ish), left behind, adopted country, patriotism, not a black and white thing, outsider, just being me again, superficial acquaintances. These all very much belong(!!) in this 'Here, There, Not Here, Not There' landscape. I would add these, from my experience: unstable and sometimes frightened. Much of this comes from becoming very ill and in hospital several times here, especially difficult when all around you is, of course, being conducted in a language of which you have learned very little.

When I was much younger, I spent nine years in two European countries, then returned to live in the UK for thirteen years before this move to Hong Kong. I haven't felt a sense of 'home' or 'belonging' anywhere, to be honest. However, for the past nine months or so, I have been having quite strong feelings and ideas that I need to be back where I came from, to be surrounded by good old (not superficial) friends and in my familiar language, culture, humour and climate. Is all that 'home'? I need rest too. Yes, it's difficult for any of us to summarise the many factors that have got us to 'where we are now'. These are my story's bare bones, but it's far from fleshed out here.

I'm almost scared to look forward to my return in case my expectations get too high and then the reality is far from equal to them. This is a lesson learned from the 'high flying' attitudes I arrived here with . . . between one thing and another, it has been an 'Icarus Descending' case here. Oh -- and to complicate matters, there are, of course, people and aspects about here that I will miss very much.

(But boy do I need A Good Laugh! )

quoll

Yes I feel like I am home and belong after 32 years in Australia. I quite enjoyed Australia for the first 10 years and don't think I would have been ready to settle down back in UK at that time. My heart was never in Australia despite the stern talking to that my head gave it all the time - I never really found the belonging and came to loathe it towards the end. I guess it might be an age thing - we like to go back to our roots to die (well hopefully not for a long time yet!) whereas we enjoy the adventure and novelty when we are young.

I guess you have to suck it and see - and if it doesn't float your boat then move on. I suspect "settling down" comes hard to us "expats" and even now it may be that I am happy and belonging at home because I know it isn't the stultifying "forever" (I will have to return to Aus at some point unfortunately)

trottytrue

Curleytops... said something that stuck in my mind about not being "herself". We do all change over the years but I think for many of us ex-pats we tend to lose ourselves when we move to a different country. Things we did at home dont seem to fit in with the new country. From my experiance I changed alot its hard to explain it but I was tired of people pointing out my differences, the way I spoke how I pronounced words differently and just everyday things, I stopped being so outgoing I became more inward and although I did mix I would get hurt many times when I was the butt of peoples jokes, I know they thought it was funny but I just grew tired of it. Even with my own family as they grew they would point things out to me that once I had been so sure of all of a sudden i wasnt sure whether I was wrong or right so I would just not get into discussions anymore.

So yes I became a different person but funnily enough whenever I go back home I just fall right back into my old self. I dont hate America there is plenty to like and having my family here helps but its just not home. Its were I live.

curleytops

Couldn't have said it better

jemima55

Hi P-Funk,
I returned almost a year ago after five years in the US (husbands job).
The difference I can sum up as I no longer feel like a "guest" in someone else's country, but at home in mine! Nobody is commenting on my accent or funny British ways, and life is not a daily struggle to hang onto my identity and Cadburys chocolate. Maybe the identity thing is unique to the US, though.
Last year was a particularly good time to return because of all the celebrations,
and the Olympics. It seemed to bring out all the best things about being British.
I love being in a place where people just "get me" and will chat generally about things and be friendly.
Among my friends, the funny thing is they are glad to have me back, but I have learned not to harp on about time in the States because they aren't really that interested! I have to look to the future and not back!
Regarding Hong Kong, I had a holiday there a really long time ago, and the big difference I noticed was that in HK there is so much street life day and night . I missed that. It seemed weird after such a vibrant place to come back to England! I was a young thing then,though!

Perth

I changed too, and I don't like it. I became more assertive in my speech to fit in with the way people behave here, when I had always been a mild mannered and quiet person. I found myself desperately trying to like other kinds of music, tv and movies than I was used to. Couldn't "get" American comedy. I am over thinking I am the problem though, and slowly rediscovering myself. Like you said, I don't hate the US. We are just not a good fit.

mickok

What a wonderful thread! I concur with what others have said about identity and being yourself. I've lived in the US most of my adult life, some 35 years., and we move back to the UK in two weeks. When I came to the US I was shy and inconfident, an outsider, identified (in my own mind at least) as not as good as others with my cockney accent and background. It was stunning to get off a plane in New York at 24 years old and suddenly become "English" rather than an East Londoner, someone interesting and intelligent, with the opportunity to change my own notion of myself, and what I could be. It took me quite a few years to take this in but over time, being here has helped me grow and stretch as a person, and develop skills and a much more positive identity and sense of self worth.

But as others have said, along with this personal growth, it has always also been about proving myself to the world, fabricating an identity as a stranger in a strange land. It's been very good for me, being foreign has worked well for many years and allowed me to step away from an impoverished sense of self. But in part this has also meant always maintaining a mask, always being one step removed from the world around me. Now I am ready to go home and integrate the positives of my life in the US with my old shy and retiring and quiet self. So going "home" is a spiritual/psychological journey as well as a physical one. Home for me means a sense of belonging to the land I grew up in, and of becoming "ordinary" again. I think that's it more than anything, the desire to relax, stop being identified as different, and just be ordinary so that I can lower my guard and reconnect with my deeper self. And I long for the ordinary things of England: a street market, a footpath, a bus, English voices, a breeze, the sound of a skylark, the countryside. Soon!

Perth

How wonderful, makes me all misty I wish you all the luck in the world. With a positive attitude such as yours you are bound to have a very successful transition home.

feelbritish

Sometimes being away from where your roots are especially for a long time forces you to look inside yourself, accept your challenges and make the best of what you have and grow as a person. Your values become your own and not what you left behind. Let us know how you get on when you return. Are you going back to the same place or are you starting off in a completely new area?

lf1

Me too. My tastes in music and TV just never gelled with the norm in Canada. I remember someone telling me about a new movie called Traffik/Traffic (not sure which spelling for the UK vs US version). They were astounded when I told them I had seen the original. What original? I explained that it was made in the UK as a TV series a few years before.

I tried to do all the things that many people like to do - golf, curling, baseball etc and I was bored stiff. Everything always seemed to centre around competition and I can't be bothered with that when I just want to have some fun. I am having lots of fun now that I am back in the UK.
This morning I had choir practice and this afternoon I took myself off for a country walk and experienced sun, rain and some light hail. I was the only person on the road, except for a few passing cars. Lots of sheep and lambs doing there thing. It was brilliant. Tonight, it is the pub quiz, which is always fun. In general, I just feel much more connected to life and don't feel as though I am an observer.

mickok

We're starting new, probably Newcastle/Durham area but we plan to spend our first month coming to a final decision. Definitely northeast though, Yorkshire, Durham, Tyne & Wear, Northumberland. I've always loved that part of the country, people and landscape, and know we would feel proud to live there, and hopefully contribute something useful.