It’s getting serious, the guy in my favorite coffee place just gave me a free Cappuccino, he said this was his parting gift for me. I swallowed down my tears and drowned my heavy heart in the Cappuccino.
What is very confusing at the moment, is the different factors that play a part. happiness and sadness have never fought more inside my heart. There is the aspect of leaving Montreal, the fact that after this, we are going on a fantastic trip around the world as a family and then coming back into our old lives in Switzerland and at the same time moving into a new stunning apartment there. Joy and anticipation mix with sorrow and fear.
While packing our Canadian life into boxes and those things we bring along for our trip into suitcases, I dread the moment of the final goodbye.
Even two months ago I wouldn’t have thought that it would be so difficult for me to say goodbye to this place. I realize only now how much Montreal has become home and how much this has become my life.
Around New Years I once said to Niels that I could not imagine to live my life in a place where it is winter for 5 months. A few weeks ago I said I was fed up always wearing the same Sorel boots day in day out for weeks already. Still, If you ask me wether I wanted to stay some more months, I’d say yes in a heartbeat. I got used to the messiness of Montreal. No, actually I fell very much in love with it. All the holes in the street and the rust everywhere, I don’t even see it anymore.
being foreign is being free
But I also started to see and love the advantages of being a foreigner. I am interesting to everyone just by being foreign. It’s so easy getting in contact with others because my origin, the reason why we came here as well as the way we experienced the move and life abroad serves as a topic which easily covers half an hour of talking.
Also, I felt free. Free of social pressure. I don’t know how I have to behave or dress or react to certain situations properly in Canada. I just do as it comes, I just dress the way I want. Of course I can do this in Switzerland as well but I know that I send a message. By dressing a certain way and speaking a certain dialect etc. I send a kind of a code which can be decoded by any other Swiss, about where I come from, which „social group“ I belong to etc. Here, I neither (intentionally) send nor receive these kinds of cods. They exist here just as much as anywhere else but as a foreigner I don’t see them, let alone be able to decode them. This makes me feel free. And I love that!
Also, our kids developed amazing language skills, which most probably will be lost once they get back to Switzerland. My two-year-old counts to ten in English, my three-year-old switched between Dutch, Swiss-German
leaving canada means leaving a part of us behind
But most importantly, I made friends. I met amazing people, Canadians as well as other Expats who have become part of our lives. Leaving them will be difficult. Because this time it’s different than leaving our friends in Switzerland. There, the friendships had been established for many years and I had not a second of a doubt that these friends will be just as much my friends when I return. Most of our friends even came to visit us in Canada and we see them on FaceTime on a regular basis. What’s more is, that we knew we would return when we left. Now with our friends we made here in Montreal, we don’t know if and when we will see them again. These are new friendships, very fragile and not yet so established. I fear the „out of sight, out of mind“ phenomenon.
Leaving behind our apartment, our routine, my yoga studio, my cafes where I always go, our beloved playground but most importantly all the friends we made is painful. Especially because it has something very final to it. But then again, we are also over the moon about the upcoming months and our travels. This has been a dream of ours and we feel so grateful that we get to experience it. Furthermore, after returning from our travels, we will move into a new apartment which needs to be furnished and decorated, tasks I am very much looking forward to. But first and foremost we get to be back home with our friends and family and everyone we missed throughout the time abroad. The girls will go back to their former daycare, which they are now already looking forward to.
But this returning to our former life also bears insecurities. What hubby fears most is getting back into the old routine ever so quickly, what I fear most is having to look for a job again. This is a recurring task in my life. It feels like I spent most of my adult life constantly looking for apartments or jobs or both at the same time. I keep starting those tasks with great enthusiasm which eventually gets blown over by despair after a flood of rejection comes my way. Okay, that’s maybe a bit dramatized but you know what I mean…
At the moment, however, we are living our last days in emotional confusion and with a heavy heart. Slowly saying goodbye to people and places, Trying to avoid the thought of closing our apartment door for good and getting on that plane that gets us back home to Switzerland for the last time. We enjoy the freezing cold and the snow as much as we can, while we still can.
We enjoy our Montreal as long as it lasts.
