From a distance...
13:32Moving abroad and leaving your family and friends in a different country has its perks but surely also its disadvantages.
I moved to England for 10 months when I was 19 and then fully when I was 21 years old. I love living here and it has been challenging but exciting.
However, there are times when I hate living away from family and old friends. I still don't regret my decision to move and pursueg what I believe God has planned for me but it's tough at times.
One of the hardest times for me is probably Christmas.
Everyone is busy and rushing around and there is hardly any time to sit down and actually catch up.
We rush from visiting one family member to the next and I enjoy it because I get to see a lot of people in a short amount of time but I also feel bad because I can't actually just be around family. We have to frantically catch up and when there's some silence in the room it feels like we have to somehow come up with another question or story from the different lives we live.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want to rant, really. I love my family. They're crazy and I love them!
With friends it is a slightly different story.
I learnt fairly early on that there will always be different types of friends. Those you have for a certain amount of time and then you both just move on. Nothing really happened; there was no fight and you didn't suddenly turn into arch-nemeses.
You simply care more about other people more, often the people who are immediately around you. That's nothing horrible, I believe; it's normal. But it does hurt if one of you does actually seem to still care more than the other one. (not going into detail with this because it'd be a little too long)
Some other friends you just have for life. There aren't many of those around, so if you find one cherish them and keep them close.
You might not see those friends any more than the others but you try to keep in touch through social media and other ways more and when you see each other in person again it feels like no time has passed. It's great!!! (Also extra sad though when you do get to spend some face to face time together and then you have to say goodbye.)
I am still learning to figure out how to let go of some of those who end up being in the first 'category'.
How much do you go out of your way all the time to keep in touch with those who don't seem to actually want to make it work?
When do you say 'okay, it has been great and I'll cherish our memories but I need to move on'.
Often those questions come back whenever I visit my family and friends back in Austria.
It's exhausting and devastating sometimes.
Staying away and simply missing people from a distance seems the less painful option for me at times (and maybe that's not the right way to go about it either).
Not having to go through that rollercoaster of emotions of being happy to see people and sad to have to leave them again is often harder to deal with than to simply stay away and get used to the feeling of merely missing them.
Just a few thoughts.
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