Split Heart of the Diasporan
A life in the diaspora is a life of dichotomy.
We immigrants go through emotional experiences that those that stay in place will never experience or fully understand.
If you have loved ones that moved away that you wish to understand better or you wish move abroad yourself, here is a glimpse into our souls.
A life in the diaspora is a life of dichotomy.
The feeling of being alone, even tho we may not actually be alone, is overwhelming.
We will never fully feel at home where we moved to and we will no longer feel home, at home.
The forever split heart, after having lived in two countries and loving and missing people in both places but only being able to be in one place, is absolutely heartbreaking.
Particularly the guilt when people we deeply care about die and we were not there to say goodbye.
And even if we would move back home, the heart is split forever and it will never be whole.
But our heart has grown.
To survive we have to embrace change. Circumstances force us into seeing the world from multiple cultural views so we are bound to question our own. And therefor, yours too.
The expectations from back home, spoken or unspoken, weighs us down and over time creates resentment between us. We have to carry your expectations. You don’t.
The daily grief we go through, from having left and not being part of life back home, is exceptionally hard to carry.
We chose a new life at the cost of leaving everyone we love behind. That was incredibly hard. This broke our heart and we know we broke yours too. And for that we are deeply sorry.
But if you know us deeply and love us, you understand and know why we had to go. And you are happy and grateful for us that we get to build a new life, even if you are hurt and sad we left and that you don’t get to have us around.
And if you are angry at us for leaving and you ask us to move home, it hurts us. It hurts because we know we cause you constant paint for having left. It also hurts because we know that you never really knew us and are unable to be happy for us. And we keep on carrying that pain because we love you, but deep down we just wish you would be happy for us.
You carry the absence of us, but we carry the absence of all of you.
You have absolutely no idea how much we miss you.
We carry all of this pain on top of having to build a new life.
But all of this pain is worth it because we have a dream.
A dream of a better life.
A life we could never have dreamed of if we had not moved.