I am in a friend’s apartment, observing her mood swinging wildly from despair to all-out rage at the triple-whammy blows of being overworked, a relationship breaking up and her best friend in the UAE leaving to return home.
She has been living in the UAE for nearly two years and is experiencing the “Expat Blues”. Driven to despair, she asked me to suggest a solution and so I gave her one gleaned from my fifth year of living here: do nothing and ride it out.
You don’t need to be an expert on the human condition to shed some light on the joys and thrills of being an expat. Many of us arrive here with no personal connections or support network. That blank canvas is equally thrilling and arduous.
Its’s a thrill because we are handed the rare opportunity to meet new people and try new things. I have seen many self-confessed former wallflowers gradually blossom into mild extroverts, all because of being enabled by the new social space the UAE affords them.
Personally, I used that new opportunity to quietly embrace a healthier lifestyle and – unlike many failed attempts back home – this time it is gradually working precisely because of the lack of old faces pulling me back into old bad habits.
As unfair as it sounds, even well-meaning loved ones can’t help you succeed if their presence only serves to remind you of past failures.
What it all boils down to is that important value that is readily available in expat communities – an initial lack of judgemental attitude. There is an in-built well of trust as part of the expat experience, in which most of us take each other at face value. It’s a liberating experience.
But like most good things in life, there is also a price to pay for this opportunity and freedom. While, like many, I savour the thrill of having a tax-free salary, I came to realise the financial burden was replaced by something more hefty – emotional tax.
The flip-side of the thrill of starting again is that it requires a lot of effort. Stripped of my home city, where my lifelong friendships were born, it took me longer than I would have liked to find a bunch of honest and solid mates.
Also, my mantra for my first year in the UAE was simple: don’t get fired. Understandably, such “encouraging” self-talk resulted in a work– aholic schedule that spoilt any chance of a relationship. Then, inevitably, there are the friendships you work on and devote time to, only to see those friends literally fly away when they decide to move on somewhere else or return home.
When all these challenges converge at once, as they do at times, it takes its toll and we are paid a visit by the Expat Blues.
I refer to it as “a visit” because the best way to deal with it is the same way you cope with an unwanted guest at your home.
You don’t ignore the visitor or pretend you are not there when it comes knocking, as it will only increase the noise to get your attention – you just open up and be patient until it has made its point and left.
I also found out that there is a point to it all: the sense of loss we felt after a friend leaves doesn’t mean the whole relationship was a waste of my time, but a glad tiding that I still had the knack of surrounding myself with good people, even when I am away from home and out of my comfort zone.
The irritation of being overworked also acted as a catalyst to make a few effective changes to my working day. Now I come home earlier to focus on new hobbies such as playing the guitar. I learnt this the hard way, after previously either wallowing in it, or trying to avoid the Expat Blues.
I now realise it is actually often a friend, visiting me to teach me something – but thankfully not making itself feel at home and leaving before it becomes a permanent, unwelcome guest.
