Too Many Goodbyes: The Sad Side of Expat Life

There are so many great benefits of becoming an Expat... once-in-a-lifetime travel opportunities, exposure to a new culture and people from all over the world, crazy expat parties, "camp life",  having an amah (maid), to name just a few of the desirable perks.  But there is a sad side to expat life that I didn't really consider when we made the decision to become expats.  There are too many goodbyes.

I knew that it would be hard to leave our home country, and that it would be sad to say goodbye to life as we knew it.  When we decided to upheave our family of 6 from Houston, and move clear across to the other side of the world, we had to say a lot of goodbyes.  Goodbye to our families, to our friends, to our kids' friends, to their schools, to our church, to our house, to good Mexican restaurants (sniff, sniff), to life as we knew it in Houston, TX.  We were leaving everything familiar behind, and going to a country I hadn't even heard of until just a few months before we moved.  A Muslim country.  A country with a completely different culture, different foods, different people.  I was going to miss our wonderful friends and family.  I was leaving them for a place where I didn't know a single person, outside of my nuclear family.  It was going to be a sad time, all those goodbyes.  I naively thought that would be the hardest part.

I remember driving in the car with my brother-in-law just a few days before the big move, and he told me that as hard as saying goodbye was on me, it was going to be harder on him and on those we left behind.  He said that everything ahead of us was going to be a new adventure, but those we left behind would just continue life as usual, but without us and missing us.  I wasn't so sure at the time because I was feeling pretty sad, but now I know that he was 100% right.  It is so much easier to be the one who leaves than the one who is left behind.

Being left behind, and having to say goodbye on a nearly constant basis, is the sad side of expat life.  With contracts typically lasting only 4 years, it's a non-stop rotating door of people in and out of the host country.  You make friends, only to have them leave.  There is no such thing as stability, really, when you're an expat.  You hit it off with someone, and then find out that they are leaving in just a year.  Over the past few years we have made some great friends in Brunei, but have had to say goodbye to so many of them.  One of the saddest things as a parent is having to watch your children say goodbye to their friends, year after year, and trying to comfort them when they cry even though you feel like crying too.  Sometimes you just cry with them.  Every time it gets a little harder.

We are now in the end of our 4th year, and people who arrived at the same time as we did are starting to leave.  It's too soon.  It's too hard.  It's too sad.  I don't know why I didn't think of this when we became expats.  I only thought of leaving our old life, but not of having to say goodbye to people in our "new life".  This weekend we will host a farewell game night for some of our best friends.  Our game night group has already been cut in half as people have left.  Things change, I know this, but here they change so rapidly.  I can't keep up.  My heart can't keep up.  It's so difficult, I don't know if I'm cut out for this after all.  And it prevents me from forming new friendships, knowing that in the near future I will have to tell them goodbye as well.

Too many goodbyes.  And it's not just here.  Every summer we go home, we have to say goodbye all over again, and that is hard too, like ripping a scab off a wound.  Every time someone comes to visit us, we have to say goodbye all over again when they leave.  Most recently it was my brother-in-law, the same one who said it's easier to be the one who leaves than the one left behind.  I felt it, more than ever, when he left us this time after his visit.  It really does get harder as time goes on, rather than easier, at least for me.   I know there's that saying, "Don't be sad it's over, be glad that it happened", but I think you can be both.  You should be happy, of course, for all the wonderful times spent with your expat friends before they move on, or the times spent with family and old friends when you get together for visits, but you can also be sad when it's over, because it IS sad!  At least I am giving myself permission to be sad.  The truth is, I hate saying goodbye.  Thankfully we have e-mail and social media to stay in touch once we've said goodbye, but that doesn't take the pain out of it.  A pain that I didn't expect, and that I feel anew with everyone who leaves.  I can only imagine how sad it will be when it comes our turn to say goodbye to life in Brunei, and I'm not ready!  As one of my friends recently said, maybe it's better to stick with "see you later."  Goodbye is too hard.