On Facebook, I am friends with all the friends and people I know from The Netherlands. Every day I scroll through my newsfeed and every day I get a little glimpse into all of these people’s lives. I’m happy that I get to know a little of how their lives are going. And I’m sad that my life is now separate from theirs and separate from that place. I miss my old football club. The ice cream from my town. The streets that I never thought I’d miss. I miss the familiarity I guess.
Sometimes I feel like I want to be a part of the life that I left behind but I know that being a part of it would not have made me happier or as happy as I am today. If I were to go back now everything would have changed so much that I would feel like a stranger and the things that used to bother me when I lived there still would.
I had decided not to return for the next few years. When I go back I will come back to a country that is familiar but there will be nothing familiar for me there. Both my parents build up their own new lives in new homes in new places. None of it is mine. I will only be a visitor. What connects me to the place where I was born? The past has passed like the past should.
I think parents will always miss their children more than that the children miss their parents. I miss little things… like being able to go to the supermarket with my mum. All of this isn’t just the past, though. It can be part of my future. I just need to find a balance between where I’m now, where I was and where I’m going.
