So I’d been living in Australia for 10 years before finally being able to go back and see my family. I surprised them with a 6 week visit with my wife and two kids.
Everyone seemed over the moon and it was great seeing all of my family but things were not the same at all. I get that 10 years is a long time but all I could feel was ‘my family have removed me from their life’. I started feeling this before I went to see them because I was the one initiating conversations and calling them but I believed it’d be different when I seen them in person.
When I got there a lot had changed. My brother had taken over the holiday house, my room had been completely changed and my sisters used mum as their baby sitter most of the time. My dad was also very distant. He was never quite affectionate but I feel like he didn’t make an effort to get to know my wife and children very much even though we were living at his house. Seeing my grandparents turn so very frail also broke me and I can’t seem to stop thinking about losing them and not spending more time with them. The family dynamic was no where near the same as when I was there.
I feel this void in my heart and even though I got married and had children I still long to have those good times with my parents and extended family like the good old days. Is this something other people have felt when going back home? Is there a way to stop being so sad about it?
Outrageous. They took down your One Direction and Man City posters? Lawyer Up mate.
How come you didn’t visit them for 10 years?
I left home in rural WA state when I was 18 for the Navy. Later, I went to school in Japan, and started my job there. I built a house back in the US to retire eventually but in later years I found out that the situation(s) had changed over time. Thomas Wolfe wrote the book “You can’t go home again”. It was taken from the writer Ella Winter to explained to Wolfe that “you can’t go back to your family, your friends, your childhood dreams.” People change including yourself. But knowing this, you can return with an open mind…and not colored with the memories of an expat who made the decision to start a life separate from his previous one. Interestingly enough, I still love to go back to my place in WA state and though my personal relationships may have changed…the river, the forest, and the animals that inhabit them are the same, unchanged world that I left back in the day.
Same thing happened to me when I joined the military.
Everyone moved one and didn’t give a shit when I came back. It hurts. Then my sister died like year later. Life sucks and is hard
No. You ditched your family and left them in the rear view mirror for a fucking decade. There’s absolutely no excuse for that. Even in college working restaurant jobs I was able to scrape together enough cash to go see my parents and family at least once a year. You replaced them, you ruined these relationships, you made them move on. I’m sorry, but you just threw them away. This is horrible.
Things change. Make the best with what you got now.
Have and do you make the time weekly to to stay in touch via FaceTime or zoom or something similar?
Life tends to get in the way…if you let it. It’s up to you ( not personal) to make the relationship you want with your family. It’s obvious from your writing you want this…now make it happen, as best you can…
In the good ol’ days we only had letter writing or visits ( very rare)…we have no excuses with all the technology at our fingertips now.
I left my home country 25 years ago. Meanwhile I changed to 3 countries and 2 continents… when I left, my parents lived in a big house where I grew up, my grand parents were always around making drama or dinners, we had a few local markets and I knew the town by heart… my parents divorced. My father remarried and had 2 new kids, my childhood house got sold and torn down, the government invested billions in my hometown to the point that there are now highways connecting suburbs, international supermarkets, immigration issues and all the “modern” life… my grand parents died, there house are now part of tall buildings, I had uncles and aunts who also died, cousins who died, my primary and my middle schools got torn down and are new high buildings…
I talk to my sister and mother every week on visio phone… they even came to visit, but we have grown apart… we essentially talk about the past, but what I regret as the good times they think of it as obscure times… because they wanted to evolve while I did not what that. This hard and difficult paradox between what my memory tells me about what the place should be and what the place became is not bearable to me… so I decoded to stop thinking about my home town in term of a place. But more a place in time. While I can always go there geographically, I cannot go back in time… so I accept their calhange and accept that regardless I won’t be affected… so I try to be happy for them and learn as much as I can of the time that lapsed since my last visit
I mean I was hurt when my room didn’t look the same after 6 months, I’m sorry but what did you expect after ten fucking years?
Can you video chat more often? Felt connected to my family because we talked like three times every week. But you can’t expect your family to essentially hold a space for your ghosts. Even if that is a painful realisation. Can you visit more often now or pay for your family to visit you?
You didn’t visit for ten years? What kind of visa were you on?
You can travel back home if you’re on a work permit. I need details.