Vignette from an expat life

In April this year, it will be 15 years since I moved to the Netherlands. Language is still the biggest challenge I'm facing everyday. Even though I've tried many times (in formal and informal ways) to learn the language, I never managed to go beyond the basics. This means that I can live my simple everyday life in Dutch but the moment conversation shifts to more depth and complexity, I'm out...

My son who's 8 now, speaks mostly Dutch to me, even though I've been consistently speaking Polish to him since he was born. There's just not enough Polish around him and the moment he went to school, he gradually stopped responding in Polish and switched almost completely to Dutch. I refused to force him to speak Polish, in case it would backfire and make him hate it. Plus... given his special needs, I had bigger fish to fry... So our relationship is happening simultaneously in 2 languages (often 3 with English!), which is often frustrating for both of us.

There's been a lot of self-blame and shame about the fact that I haven't managed to master a language of the country I've called home for the past 15 years. And currently I'm moving through another wave of extreme fatigue around living in a place where so much of my daily life feels like swimming upstream - simply because wherever I go I'm surrounded by a language that requires extra hard work from my already overworked AuDHD brain...

For that reason alone I often find myself missing Amsterdam terribly - where the language (and cultural) barrier was that much less taxing... An ex of mine said it once perfectly: when you're in Amsterdam, you can still feel you're in the world, but when you're in Groningen, you're really in the Netherlands. And because of that I've struggled a lot since leaving A'dam. But also I've worked hard over the past couple of years to make Groningen my home. To stop feeling like a victim of circumstances (I live here to co-parent my son 50/50 with his Dutch dad) and consciously choose it and make the most out of it. And I must say that it has worked, somewhat...

But then an evening like last night happens and I just feel it: the fatigue... I went to a queer poetry night and not only the poetry was pretty much exclusively in Dutch, totally to be expected (and yes, I actually can understand quite a lot but have to focus real hard), but then also all the socializing is in Dutch and frankly... Even on a good day I can only handle it for so long, but on a day when I'm already tired, it becomes simply impossible.

In those moments, I miss diverse international environments. I miss them deeply. And the International is the key word here because it's not just about speaking the same shared language but about a certain mentality, flexibility and openness. Maybe a sense of shared experience. An environment where it's not assumed that you're "the same" but that "of course you are different and tell me all about it". Oh, and yeah... I'm too old to hang with international students - painful but true!

There's no part in me that wants to talk sh*t and complain about this country, or the region I live in. As an expat I can appreciate everything I am receiving by being here. But when I first moved here, I lived in Utrecht and worked at the university there surrounded by a beautifully diverse queer student and academic community. Later on I lived in Amsterdam surrounded by equally heterogenous international community of modern hippies. And after that I lived in an obscure Frisian village, yes, but in an international retreat center with all sorts of groups rolling in and out. And all of that is a very long shot from where I live now: a region that even the rest of the country calls "somewhere up there" - too far and too provincial for anyone to be genuinely interested (btw 2 hour drive in the Netherlands is considered "long distance" and no one from the west-south will make the effort).

There's a small town charm to Groningen and on good days I love it, having grown up in one of the biggest industrial cities in Poland which was really overwhelming. It actually does have a village kind of feel to it that so many of us are glorifying and longing for these days. Except, we often forget that traditional villages are often rather hermetic and homogenous. And for a myriad of reasons that I can totally own (social awkwardness and overloaded nervous system being just a couple) I have simply not found my way in just yet... Now, I will keep trying because... what else is there to do? But once in a while I need to give myself the space to just say it like it is:

I. Am. Tired.

More precisely: I'm tired of not belonging.

And this is a tired moment, not the whole story.

If you’re an expat too and you’re also tired, let’s meet up and relax our brains together in a language we can actually exhale in together (instead of going to a language cafe to practice our Dutch... which seems to be the only place expats can meet in Groningen - if you know other ones DO let me know).

PS 1. A shout out to my Dutchies: I love you my Dutch friends, and I really do appreciate you making the effort to speak English with me all these years and I can also see that it's not always easy for you.

PS 2. Some of you readers are probably wondering: why is she there in the first place and why can't she move? You're going to have to be satisfied with this simple answer: it's complicated (think postpartum depression, trauma and survival).

PS 3. Maybe I am a Big City Girl after all...?