Immigration ... moving "guilt"

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A couple of months ago I looked into something that's been termed "immigration guilt" - that feeling that sometimes overcomes you when you reflect on moving countries and you consider and remember all that you left behind. While in my instance it can be related to moving countries, but it can just as likely be in relation to moving within the same country, moving to a new town to a new place maybe for a new job or to start at university, anywhere to start anew. 

Books, articles and websites on the subject wrap immigration guilt up with self identity, self representation of the old and new, the turmoil of relocating, questions of how does one cope with your idea of "self" in your new setting. In actuality I've experienced and internalize this sense of guilt into questioning how people in your former life and location cope, particularly parents without you, others have described questioning if migrating was the right thing to do. Its like homesickness, but much more self questioning. For me it's not that I regret, nor do I question my motive or decision to leave the UK - it was the right thing for me, for my relationship and where I am in my life. But, I left at a time where my friends are growing up and i'm not there.

Maybe it's partly selfish - I've just thought that as I sit here typing this out but with us now looking for our first house, America increasingly feels like home, and the UK not so much, my ties are slowly being cut from the homeland and sometimes it hurts - but it's natural and it's okay for it to hurt. Friends from school and university are now, like myself in our late twenties, a few are getting married, even more are having babies. One of my closest friends who I've managed to keep a friendship going with since moving is getting married in May, and while i'd love to be there, money doesn't allow. Another has been married and had a baby in the time I've being living in America. It's not that I'm jealous of them, but you can sometimes get wrapped up in this sense of guilt because you want to be there, but you can't. It can reach the point whereby you over idealize people, places and events through the "if only". Social media can make this worse and while it helps that you can keep in touch easier with people, flashes of their life on your timeline, their going out, going to weddings, showing their babies makes you feel even more remote, you're just watching their life from afar. But you have to handle the emotions and move on, other people's lives won't stop because you moved. Harsh but true and in fact they might be thinking the same about your own life and experiences as you share countless photographs of all the new places you visit, foods you try to new people you meet that they don't know. They might be hurting just as much as you because they can't be sharing those new experiences with you. 

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Overall it is something natural to feel, emotions are emotions, it would be worse to hide them, to ignore them and bottle them up. It's ok to move be if fifty, five hundred or five thousand miles, have moments of homesickness, feel bad about not being able to share in life's journey, to reflect but most importantly to carry on living your own life. Relocating is hard, it's a period of reflection, self evaluating and change but also new possibilities and a battle between your old self and the new - it takes a while for the two self's to settle and have a part of yourself in another place - that's part of the fun of relocating.

"I am two, one looks back

the other turns to the sea" 

Gabriel Mistral