The Castle

Every so often the subject comes up about the effort it takes to adjust oneself to living in a foreign country. I don't think that I need to reinforce the fact that it is a monumental task, which is virtually impossible to emotionally prepare for. Some people take to it like a duck to water. I hate those people. Some people arrive looking for an excuse to leave, find it pretty much straight away, and promptly vanish again. Nothing new is ever going to be right for those people. They like what they like and that's all there is to it. Some people try their hearts out but just can't reach that point where they are really happy being away from their familiar surroundings. They are who they are. They typically leave after a year or so. That's tough. You've done most of the hard work and it seems like it was all for nothing. It's hard not to feel as though you've failed, as though you weren't quite good enough. Of course it's not that simple and it's neither an easy nor fun situation to be in.

So how have I lasted here ? Although I can't really say that I didn't come to Sweden by choice, I'm an adult and I could have said No at any time. That being said, given that the idea to move to Sweden wasn't my idea from the beginning, it's fair to say that I wasn't 100% behind the plan. If I hadn't already married into a Swedish connection, I most likely would never have come to Sweden. In fact, I most likely never would have left NZ. So there was a degree of pressure. But not a negative kind of pressure. When I forced myself to confront the issue, I had to acknowledge that there really wasn't anything that was stopping me from moving to Sweden. Other than that of lazy comfort.

I arrived in Sweden full of bravado. I wasn't going to have any problems adjusting to Sweden and life would be exactly like it was for me in NZ. I had never lived anywhere else, so it never occured to me that things would be anything different to what I knew and had come to expect. You can't count holidays or short stays where you know there is an end date. That's not really living in a country. It took my 2 hours dealing with Animal Customs at Arlanda airport to decide that I'd made completely the wrong decision. From that point on it was tough for Sweden. Everywhere I turned, I found fault. And naturally, none of the fault was mine. It stayed that way until I started at SFI.

Spending time in the SFI language class, in the company of other immigrants, was a big turning point. It had nothing to do with learning Swedish. That was really just a convenient by-product. What it did was to give me a much needed reality check as to what I was and what I wasn't. The thing is that, once you strip language away, we all become very much the same. Regardless of background, country of origin, education etc. The moment we stepped into that classroom, we were all of us on exactly the same level. And that was a new and rather bitter pill for me to swallow. I looked around me and saw retired pole dancers and child soldiers who were coping perfectly well with life in Sweden. Not easily, but they were coping. And they weren't going to give up just because it was a bit tough. So what would that say about me if I walked away. Was I all just piss and wind ? I guess I knew what the answer to that was.

The key to my survival has been twofold. First and foremost, it's been the unconditional support of my wife. Whom I truely do not deserve, I have to say. Without her accepting my constant rants and raves about how everything was different, everything was wrong, everything was stupid, and everything was better back "there", with a postive and forward moving attitude, you would probably be reading a blog about how I went for Sweden for a holiday but now I'm back where I belong. Clearly she's been both the driver and the prize in my Pursuit of Happiness.

Oddly enough, the second major contributing factor is not too far from the first. As much as it pains me, I give thanks to my ex-wife. A divorce throws your life upside down. Everything you knew is suddenly gone and you're faced with the task of being forced into starting life over again. Almost sounds like emigrating, anyone ? The thing is that, once you're forced to do something, you realise that there really no reason why you couldn't have done the same thing before. It's only yourself who sets the limits on what you are capable of. A bit simplistic, but you get the idea. A lesson learnt is a lesson learnt and coming to Sweden 10 years after my divorce, I reminded myself that I could do this. I'd done it before, so there was no real excuse this time. Nothing that was to come could be any worse than going through the divorce. It's good to have something to compare to, to gve a problem a realistic sense of scale. Otherwise fear and frustration runs away with you, growing a problem to a size way beyond it's actual impact.

There's a great line from a movie which I often refer back to when faced with a crisis of self confidence. When asked to join in a battle against a group of rogue land developers, a rather subdued middle aged woman responded with the words that have kept me sane and forward moving over the years:

"Yeah. F*** them. What can they do to me that the Ex hasn't already done ?"

All you Exs out there, we salute you. Without you bringing us down, we wouldn't know when we were on the way up.

Do your worst, Sweden. You're playing in the shallow end if you think you're going to beat me. Bigger people than you have tried.