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Traveling is weird. You go off around the world to “find yourself”, but in the end (if you’re anything like me anyway) it can sometimes feel like you don’t quite belong anywhere. I’m sure it can feel that way for short term travelers, as you’re opened up to a whole world (literally) of possibilities. But today I’m thinking more about the long term travel folks, or those who (like me) have emigrated to another country. Is home the place you’re from or the place you now live? Sometimes the lines are as blurred as the stamps in your overused passport. Spoiler alert though: I don’t have the answer. I wish I did. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe it’s not meant to be one place or the other. Could it be both?
Entering the world of long term travel
I was not a traveler. I didn’t want to leave my hometown. Finishing high school, I went to university in my hometown. Even when I moved out of home I was at my parents’ place almost every day. I come from a smaller place, a city but more like a big town. You can’t walk down the street without bumping into someone you know. Even the friends that moved away for university have slowly made their way back over the years.
Carlisle is safe, familiar, predictable. I realized one day I could probably be the kind of person to coast along in the same job I’d had since I was 17 forever. I loved it. Loved the people. And it’s not a bad thing at all. But it kind of scared me. I realized I wanted something more. Talking to people about places they’d been intrigued me, and there was the spark.
I moved to Vancouver, Canada for 6 months. You can read all about my initial journey here. But that 6 months has now been the last 13 years of my life. How’s that for long term travel? I’m now fully immersed in a country I wasn’t born in. Sounds exciting doesn’t it? Well it is. It was. I had hopes, dreams and ideas of a better life in my chosen country instead of the one I’d been born in. This was the main reason for wanting to explore the world. Hopefully I would “find myself”, whatever that meant. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of that has come true and I definitely wouldn’t change any of it. But the reality now is that I’m both Canadian and British. Yet also kind of neither.
Where are you from?
I hold two passports, have two countries to my name, have family and friends in both. Yet I will probably never be whole in a way I’m kind of envious of a lot of other people for. In Canada I will always be English, the girl with the accent.
When I speak in the supermarket or visit one of the many attractions in Vancouver, the assumption will be that I’m visiting, not that I’m now a local. I’ll always be asked if I’m a permanent resident, or when I might become a citizen. I did that 4 years ago. The country of Canada (and the people) welcomed me with open arms. But then the British national anthem starts and I’m reminded that I’m also still very British at heart.
The flip side is that now when I visit the UK people now can’t always place my accent. They joke with me that I sound more Canadian now. In Canada I’m too English, in England I’m too Canadian. Go figure! So where do I belong? Both places or neither? Britain or Canada?
Going home after long term travel
I love visiting my hometown, but there are also times where people assume my life is ridiculously exciting all the time. But at home in Vancouver I get up earlier than I would probably like, work Monday to Friday, watch TV in the evenings and go out for drinks with my friends or a weekend away with my better half Jeff. Just like I would do in the UK. See, it’s just different. Not better, not worse, just different.
It’s a strange feeling to go back to your hometown when you no longer live there. I’m sure many others have the same feeling. I spend the first couple of days feeling like I’m so far removed from the place I grew up, everything seems smaller and much the same as I left. But by the end of the stay I feel like I’ve just slipped back into the same ways I had 10 or 15 years ago. I catch up with friends and family I often see only once a year at best, and within minutes I’m reminded why they’re still in my life. It’s like I never left.
Then I come to leave and I always get rather emotional. Leaving my parents is never easy. Having to say goodbye to everyone again and again, never sure when I’ll see them next. Knowing that they’re going to go on with their lives and I’ll go on with mine and we’ll do this dance again in a year.
Home is where your family are
I feel like I appreciate my hometown a lot more now. As I was leaving this time I went into the cathedral to look around. It was 5pm, absolutely no-one there except me. Then I heard the organist. Practicing, and play the most hauntingly eerie music that one could imagine in an 800+ year old building. So I sat down and listened, and realized I was lucky to call this place one of my homes. I mean Carlisle has a freaking castle that’s over 900 years old. Wherever you might live you have to admit that’s pretty cool.
But as I travel from country to country, neither here nor there, always thinking about the place I’ve left behind or am going to next, there’s one thing that doesn’t change. The people. The people I have in my life that I’m glad have made all this easier. It’s not an easy decision leaving everything you know to emigrate. Not everyone will understand it, and that’s OK. But for me I want to see new places and travel, and I know it was the right decision for me.
Maybe I’ll be back in the UK to live at some point. Maybe not. But now I have my two passports the world is pretty much my oyster. I fit in both in Britain and Canada, I don’t quite belong in either. That’s OK. Maybe I’ll just call myself Britadian from now on instead. Whatever I call myself, I’m always happy to have my friends and family come visit.
If you’ve enjoyed this post leave a comment or share using the social media buttons below. Have you moved countries? How do you cope with leaving your friends and family behind while experiencing long term travel?
Really relate! I have been away from UK for 8 years now and it’s funny how you can have two homes and also no homes at the same time.
I remember a friend saying: home is where the heart is – and yours is, for sure, with the people you love (even when you are not exactly in the same city or even country or continent).
Leaving is never easy – but without living home, a traveler couldn’t explore the world 🙂
Yes! So true. Been away for 15+ months now and although I’ve found myself, I also feel lost.
I relate to this so much. I was born and raised in Canada but also hold citizenship in the US, where I lived for 5 years, and now I live in Mexico. I’m basically in a perpetual identity crisis. Every time I visit my hometown (Victoria, BC) I get so nostalgic and think “what if I moved back?” especially since all my friends are starting to… but like you said, I never really quite felt like I belonged there. I always feel bummed out when I leave and say goodbye to everyone, and it takes me time to readjust to my everyday life… but once I do I remember why I made the move and I feel content again.
It’s not an easy question for a person like you where do you belong if you have two passports and two places where you lived a long time. I am glad that you have your own answer to that. Thanks for sharing.
As soon as I read the title your post caught my attention. I have lived abroad in a couple different countries and now I am doing the remote, long-term travel & work thing. When people ask me where I am from or where my home is I always have the same question, “Is home the place you’re from or the place you now live”?
I have the same strange feelings when I go back to my hometown. Because my immediate family still lives in my hometown I usually say that is where I am from.
It’s so cool you have two passports!!
This is such a great post, Emma. I kind of relate, but the longest I’ve been out of the UK is 18 months, so not to the extent of living somewhere else for years. Though I also relate to it on a smaller scale, in the fact I lived in Sussex for seven years and it didn’t quite feel like home, yet every time I returned to Orkney, it also didn’t feel like home. I remember feeling exactly like this for years and it frustrated me. It’s partly why I chose to come back to Scotland too, because I wanted a home.