Round And Round It Goes - Which Country Nobody Knows! Keeping Perspective While Changing Lives

Round And Round It Goes - Which Country Nobody Knows! Keeping Perspective While Changing Lives
By Liz Galloway

Have you ever wanted to live in more than one place at a time? Felt constricted by tradition and wondered how you could live all the lives you had created in your mind in just one lifetime? I have.

Next month I may end up in a completely new country. My job and life may change. New language, culture, neighborhoods, foods, places to discover, and per usual, finding the cool little places where the locals go. Its' exciting, its challenging, its' disorienting, and it's my evolution.

I find myself scanning the internet, always on the lookout for interesting offers, jobs, retreats, volunteerism. This could be my second life, my third, or even the one that just lets me feel grounded. But what would that take? How far would I travel to find home?

I can't decide if I'm regressing back into childhood or having an early midlife crisis. The difference. Children are so oblivious to people in lieu of their playtime. They don't wonder if the game they've created is understood or approved by the adults around them. They'll create fun out of sticks, stones, insects, and things you don't want them to touch. Just minutes ago, I had an abnormally monstrous size pine cone wiz by my face as a group of kids played what resembled a game of pine cone tag. The 'game' of a mid lifer's crisis' on the other hand are preoccupied, indecisive. They can be fickle as they re-collect all the past years, can't make sense of the current years, and ponder the future ones.

I left Central America to return to the states, and spent time living between Utah and India until my recent arrival in Spain. I was immediately comfortable in Barcelona, have a great position, access to beautiful places, travel, things, new acquaintances, but yet had an uneasy feeling in my stomach. This unease has prompted me to ponder changes in my life, living as an expat, my family, work, and that undefined question... Happiness?

Barcelona is a stopover country on my way to I don't know where. I could take a position in Doha, or the Mexican Riviera. I can go where I want. Its' a game of roulette, whichever comes first, I'll take it. Right now I feel, if I just keep moving, countries, jobs, people, that the sheer lack of inertia will keep me from having to answer the question. What would it take to make me really happy? What does that mean? Questions come in troves as I ponder the sheer magnitude of life.

At the same time that I love this city, I hate it. At the same time I'm comfortable, I'm still a foreigner. Where I find peace, I also find my emotions volatile, I feel free and child like, but burdened and old. No, I'm not bi-polar, nor ever lived my life irresponsibly. In fact I've been the one mothering my friends, leaning on the conservative side, pulling people back from the edge, and taking the job of motherhood very seriously.

Though I've made career decisions to live as an expat with my son years ago, I'd never taken uncalculated risks. With the past 8 years revolving around expat life, some friends envy me, others think I'm crazy, and family... Let's just say they're not supportive.

Now for the first time, I'm questioning decisions, feel restless, and am embarking on a new exploration that is more strange and more unsettling than the most foreign and far away land could be. Part of this reconciling with past and present is an affliction that comes with expat -hood.

Thrown into this concoction is the recent and unexpected fact that I no longer have my son with me as he fights to enter young adulthood and is too busy orbiting a destructive biological father whom he wants to familiarize himself with, and the final depletion of a 6 year marriage that became destructive and shameful. My deepest, darkest feelings now coming to the surface.

I'm fully aware that this combination of events, while navigating my new surroundings has created a Molotov cocktail. Keep the lighters away please. My previous expat relocations seemed to have been so effortless compared to this. So deciding if I'm childlike or pre-crisis doesn't really need to be decided concretely right now. Both are unaware, confused about who they are or where life is going from time to time, and both can be uncertain of the validity of their decisions.

That leaves 'Happiness'? Well-being, bliss, peace of mind, hopefulness, joy... Knowing what it would take to make that uneasy feeling in my stomach go away, I'm not quite there yet. I know that I am on a journey, and it will come.

Travel for me has always been a stress reliever, an apprenticeship of life, a dream experience where I could safely observe cultures, languages and people, participating in them as much or as little as I wanted. Its' part of who I am. I doesn't make me impulsive, or illogical. The objectivity in my panoramic perspective is still there. The answer to the ultimate question of happiness is within reach.

For now I'll enjoy a late night viewing of young couples performing Flamenco in a quaint bar in Placa Rieal, sip a 'copa de vino blanco', and at some point, make my way back home. Though, I'm alone, it's hard to feel very lonely amongst so many people, there is always something to do. This is home for now, until the unease becomes too great, or the seduction of more money, a more attractive position, exotic location, or even the enticement a new person becomes too enticing. Who knows, it could be my fourth life.

We as women, are built with extraordinarily strength, creatures with soul. As expat's we are a breed amongst ourselves, whether we are an accompanying partner, a professional, a mother, or most likely a combination of all of the above. It's easy to doubt perspective amid change.

For now, I don't care if those around me approve of or understand of my "game". Life is a game for all of us. For the first time its' just me, and my journey has just begun.

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