I feel sick writing this. I know how lucky you all think I am; living in France, drinking lots of coffee and eating lots of bread & cheese. But it’s not that easy. Life as an ex-pat, as an immigrant, is hard. It’s testing, every day, away from so many of the people I care about, away from a language I understand, away from a society that makes sense to me.
We live in what amounts to the middle of nowhere making it difficult for me, a non-driver, to integrate or find people my own age to even attempt to mingle with. And I don’t speak the language, I try, I swear to you that I try. I have lessons once a week, I do my homework, I get by, but I can’t hold a conversation. I can’t mindlessly chat.
God how I want to mindlessly chat.
I want to come home.
I want to be in a place where I don’t feel so alone, excluded, alien.
I want to know how things work, to understand the writing on the forms I need to fill in, the little jokes people make. I want that so much. To feel a part of society. Right now I’m an onlooker, I’ve been dragged to a concert I don’t want to be at at everyone is having fun but me.
I want to live in a little town in the UK, not where I was before, somewhere new, a fresh start, away from those bad memories, but in the UK somewhere. I want to be able to wander in to town, meet up with a friend for coffee that isn’t a cheap espresso, chat and window shop for clothes that don’t cost the Earth.
I know I’ve had this moan before, but it plagues me. I lie there at night waiting to nod off and I wish, I wish so hard to be home. I think about how I could do it, the practicalities, the possibilities, if I’ll ever manage to make it back or whether I’ll be stuck here forever.
I don’t want to marry here and settle, I want to go home.
