Expat loneliness - Does it get any better?

Posted from my blog:  papillon-pam.blogspot.pt/2014/11/expat-lonelinessdoes-it-get-any-better.html#more

The rains have started here in Portugal. It's funny, when I first moved here two years ago, all I kept reading about was how good the weather was and how much the sun shines here. Once the rains start it just gets damp, humid and grey and it rains for days at a time. Most apartments don't have central heating or very good insulation, so it is always cold. Last year my clothes got mouldy in the closet from the damp humidity. I am dreading the upcoming winter and I have a strong urge to run away to somewhere warm, where my bones don't feel cold.

I was only going to give Portugal a year, that was the plan. After 4 months of being here I fell in love and I have now been here two years. My boyfriend is Portuguese, and owns a bar, Patio do Sol, in the suburbs, about a 20 minute drive from Lisbon. I hadn't been in a real relationship for almost 6 years so I fell fast and hard in love. I have always had a positive and sunny disposition and outlook on life, and always been strong, and fiercely independent. When you move to another country and don't speak the language several things happen. First, you feel loneliness, even when you are surrounded by other people. Take last weekend, for example. My boyfriend and I attended his niece's birthday party. Everyone spoke Portuguese, of course. There were a couple of people there that knew me and spoke English to me directly, but when trying to be a part of a group, or be involved in a discussion, that is where it ends...so I laughed when other people laughed, even though I didn't get the joke, which made me feel a bit stupid and out of place. Then, you can't express your personality, your wit, your intelligence, and sometimes people just look at you in a kind of pitiful way, which makes you feel worse. It's also a hit on your confidence of sorts when you cannot express yourself completely and deeply.

I don't have my gaggle of different girlfriends or family here that I can just go get together with when I need support or just to talk. I have always been able to make friends easily because I am open hearted, open minded and honest, and pretty cool and funny I might add. Despite this, I have had a hell of a time connecting with Portuguese women. Most of the women I have met are warm hearted and nice enough, but perhaps because of the language barrier we just don't seem to get further than the usual..."Hey, nice to meet you, would love to hang out sometime" kind of thing. In two years there is just one woman, the girlfriend of one of my boyfriend's best friends, that I have spent any "girl" time with, apart from my American colleague who has become kind of a little sister to me, and who is leaving to go back to the US next month, leaving me in somewhat of a panic.

I cannot remember the last time I actually met someone here that inspired me, or made me think..."Wow, what a cool and interesting person, I hope I get to hang out with them again." And all this has been getting me down, in a big way.

Don't get me wrong. I have had some unbelieveably great moments here, and my boyfriend has been trying very hard to make me feel comfortable and at home. In fact, sometimes I feel I am not being fair to him because he tries so hard and I am somewhat dismissive, almost as if he is to blame for my unhappiness, when in truth I can see myself growing old with this man. And yet, for some reason I feel confined, suffocated, like all this is too small, and I feel claustrophobic, depressed, sad, insulated and lonely.

I have been nomadic all my life and have never stayed in one place too long, but I have always very quickly adapted and made the best of the place I happen to be. Here I find myself feeling split in two, with one foot seemingly in the place I spent most of the last half of my life, San Francisco, and one foot here in Portugal, this foreign place where I still haven't grasped the language and can't seem to find food I love. Torn between two worlds, feeling like I am living in some strange "limbo land". I hanker for "home" but the longer I am away, the more that is all a memory, so "home" in that sense has become something that it isn't.

As I try to assimilate into this life and this culture, there is so much I miss from my former life, apart from the obvious family and friends. I miss Sunday brunches, eggs benedict and mimosas in the Mission. I miss the varying Asian cultures and all that comes with them, from the Vietnamese nail salon ladies, Pho, Dim Sum, Korean BBQ, Chinese take-out, exotic sushi that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, to Pad Ped Pladuck, my own Indian culture, hipsters, innovation, a "can-do" attitiude, thinking outside the box, progessiveness, going out to the ball park, Halloween, hippies, dressing up in costume just for the hell of it, nerds and geeks, hip hop and hyphy, Mexican taco trucks, a good cosmo or bloody mary, creative salads, avocados and asparagus, silent disco parties on the beach, good customer service, polite waiters, Thanksgiving...I could go on and on. And yet, here I am, halfway across the world from all that I miss, trying to assimilate to a new culture that doesn't feel half as evolved, and yet with an older and more richer history than the comparative adolescent that is America.

I think I've got cojones, simply for changing careers at 40, leaving at the top of one career to go work with kids 20 years younger than me in a completely different industry, starting near the beginning...a humbling experience in itself,  to a country where I knew nobody, didn't speak the language, just took a risk and jumped in, just to shake things up a bit, only to prove that just because you are in your 40's, that shouldn't stop you from starting again, from staying away from the norm, from taking risks, not being afraid of change, getting out of that comfort zone and feeling out of it, every day. Maybe this loneliness is just temporary, and maybe I need to go through this as a process, in order to learn something, or grow some more. Whatever it is, I am not giving up, and despite Portugal and all the differences, the sometimes negative, fear-based, non-inventive attitude of it's citizens, I am not going to let it change me. Some people go their whole lives staying with what feels comfortable. Not me. Bring it on.