Reflecting on moving abroad

It's coming up on 2 years since I moved to Barcelona. It has been the hardest thing I've taken on, as I've tackled finding jobs, finding accommodation, finding friends, and fitting into the community in general. At times, it has been overwhelming, with complicated emotions surfacing, but I can say it has been worth the pain so far.

Not having to take vitamin D in the winter has been a nice side effect too!

Barcelona is such a melting pot of cultures that I've not only learnt so much about the Catalan culture but also about the Middle East, the Americas, and South Asia from many interesting immigrants in this city. As the end of the year comes rushing in, I've started to think more about home and what I left behind.

In a look-back at the past few months in particular, I realised I was homesick. But my homesickness wasn't presenting itself the way I thought it happened in movies. It was masquerading as low-grade alienation instead, where I was judging everyone around me unfairly, basically being wary and defensive in a petty way. This expectation in my head that people were treating me negatively was a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I was looking out for this exact behaviour, ignoring the many incredible, wonderful moments that made up the majority of my time here.

In a way, this retrospective is a reminder about my own behaviour. An awareness that homesickness can leak out sideways in strange ways and a hope that I don't have to relearn this lesson in the future.

One small example of my telling behaviour was when I went to an indoor climbing gym in the city with an Italian friend. A group of Catalan climbers beside us were enjoying their own company, and when I attempted a difficult climb, I noticed one of them looking at me. My mind immediately went, uh oh, they're judging me..

Instead, the person came over and started encouraging me in Catalan. I wasn't sure what he was saying; he realised that I didn't understand and switched to Spanish. I managed to finish the climb, and I was buzzing. When I got down, he came over and fist-bumped me.

He wasn't judging, had no issues, not complaints. He was just being positive and I refused to absorb it.

That moment was the first revelatory wtf am I doing. Just a senseless defensiveness that didn't allow me to give this person a chance. In the past two years in Barcelona, nothing has changed. The people and the places are the same! But like the fable of the boiling frog, I haven't perceived the slow and steady tiredness encroaching into my everyday interactions, and now all of a sudden ordinary social things seem like they're taking more effort.

I miss the idle chatter when I'm buying the milk and bread in Ireland or telling bad jokes about the neighbouring county that always land well. I miss many things, but I moved for many more reasons beyond these fond comforts. The double whammy of self-sabotaging and romanticising the past is a peculiar aspect of my own homesickness, but moving home is not the fix.

I don't have a nice takeaway lesson from this post. It's just a reminder for myself that moving abroad is hard and I need to sit with this discomfort for a while longer. Things are going to be frustrating, but it'll be grand, sure.