The Expatriate
Wanderlust. A typical description of any wandering protagonist is their lust to discover. The catharsis they wish to find in a discovery yet unseen. A protagonist chases the unknown, through plot and circumstance, through the depths of our imagination, until he finds the dragon to be slayed. Moving is very much the opposite of this classical journey, a story of a perpetually fleeing main character, followed by friendships turned to dust and side-plots so conveniently forgotten. You live and you wish for the day when you will have to move once more — think to yourself, “maybe not this time”.
Of course, this goes to describe a very particular main character, yet, it encapsulates the experiences of many expat children: move abroad, make friends, laugh, grow up, move abroad, lose friends, grow apart, make friends, laugh… And so the cycle goes, ad nauseum until the cogs break and the system wears tired of its continual betrayal of the past. I’d like to say that many of us have tried our damndest to keep in touch and to break all barriers to meet our old friends, and yet, hard as we may try, time’s arrow marches on. Few but the strongest of connections remain, being lost to negligence that is only natural when faced with hundreds or thousands of kilometers of separation. Gross negligence all the same.
Yet, I say to myself, there is good to this too. You meet a magnitude more people than you would otherwise and moving is only natural given the most mundane of lives anyway. You would have moved for studies, work, love, life, all the same, why fuss over the details of the when, when precisely what determines it all is the how. You stay in touch with only your very best of friends, and you continue unrelentlessly pursuing only the interests you actually enjoy, and you discover yourself for yourself and yet. Yet it can all be all too forthcoming. Too predictable, unlike life itself. Unnatural in how it presents itself.
Today, it is hard to lose all sight of people you truly wish to keep in touch with. As I have done, one can keep contact with friends across any border, physical or otherwise. It comforts me to be able to see my best friends from India after being apart for years at a time and still be able to make the same stupid jokes and to catch up like nothing had separated us. This is partly due to all the means of communication still left between us, but more so because a strong connection once forged never quite loses its strength. This makes apparent a dimension rarely considered when it comes to friendships, that of time. Change as you may, a friendship can remain in stasis over periods of time that fascinate and captivate, to an extent that few things can.
All I am left with now is everything I have done before. All I will have tomorrow will be everything that I’d done today, and that everything that I already had. All the friendships you have made, all the experiences you have had, and all the people that you have met, they are not gone and forgotten, rather, they follow you in your steps, as time marches on, as wanderlust takes you over, and as everything that you did today moves at pace with you to tomorrow.