2. Foreign in Both Places | The Hard Truth About Moving Back Home
An immigrant abroad, a foreigner at home: what it feels like to not belong completely to any place.
BELONGING
Every time I go back to Brazil, it feels different from any of the other 15 countries I have visited. But going back to Brazil with the plan to stay permanently brought a different feeling.
I visited the Opera House for the first time in three years. I tried to “say goodbye” and enjoy the country that became my home. And that made me realize that I was a foreigner there too. The limit of belonging was so clear, and it hurt. This is what it feels like to be foreign in both places.
Always the immigrant: my life abroad
Outside Brazil, I was always an immigrant. I never felt 100% like I belonged, even when I embraced the culture and adapted. That was always very clear to me. Adapting to a completely different and difficult accent reminded me of that. Living in big capital cities and meeting more immigrants made me feel more Brazilian.
Then I moved to a small remote community, with few immigrants and mostly “Australians.” I confess that this immersion put my identity aside a little. I spoke English most of the time. I even got used to having “snacks” for lunch. Where is my rice and beans? Little by little, my habits and my way of seeing things changed. I already worked 100% in English, and I had a hard time explaining things in Portuguese. There were words I had learned only in the Australian context, and they were hard to translate without sounding lost in my own language.
Trying to belong would help me a lot. I put my culture aside, I was sometimes ashamed of my accent, and I thought that embracing something different could fill the lack of community that I wanted so much.
I tried to fit in, in small ways. I tried to like fishing, but I couldn’t. Putting butter on a slice of cake and grilling it took me a while to like, and today I love banana bread. I got addicted to sausage rolls, the homemade ones of course. I learned new slang. But some things reminded me that I was not from there, like not having access to Medicare and always being worried about my visa and my time there.
Living in a small Indigenous community, where everybody knew each other, made me feel a little at home. I made a connection that I will never forget. Unfortunately, I couldn’t feel completely at home, because they had their own language, and their culture was so strong and different.
The goodbye: leaving a place called home
A month before, I started to prepare, I had to donate half of my clothes. Then I realized that I had only a few weeks left. Okay, calm down, I got it.
The goodbye was sad, and in the end I felt that it was a little cruel to me. I left on my birthday. I had a little birthday party with the people I love. I even made cake and brigadeiro, a Brazilian sweet. It was very sad to say goodbye. I knew this goodbye had no return: a goodbye to people, to places, to my safe harbor, to my work, and even to the animals. I volunteered helping animals, and I still miss some of them today. I couldn’t even read the cards and messages. I cried a lot, and it really hurt.
It comforted me that people wished me luck and success. The people I worked with gave me a lot of support. They encouraged me, because I knew what I was doing and I was doing it for the right reasons.
I feel like I left a piece of my heart there, and a version of me that I don’t know if will ever come back. A version I miss: the calm, the peace, the small supermarket, or just “shops,” as they like to say. A simpler version of me stayed there, and that felt strange.
The last days were nice, a mix of feelings. Being a tourist in Australia was new and different. And that was okay, because after all I was going home, excited, full of dreams. To be honest, that made me push Australia away a little. I thought: “I’m grateful, thank you, but I have my country to go back to.”
But that feeling lasted only a few days.
Foreign at home: when your own country feels strange
Going back to “home” was a contrast to everything I had lived in the last three years. It was not a temporary visit. I was back for good, and that was my new reality, even if it felt strange. Feeling like a foreigner at home is a horrible feeling, and I just wanted to erase it. I didn’t want to face it.
The return was a shock, and I felt out of place. Perseverance kept me going. But some things don’t seem to fit anymore. Things very particular to my culture became strange, and people calling me “gringa” (foreigner) didn’t help. It bothers me because it feels like I abandoned my culture, and I know I don’t belong there either.
It bothered me when people called me Australian. “No, I’m 100% Brazilian.” And to avoid more questions, I just said I was on holiday in Brazil. But that was worse, because then the questions started about my old self, my work, everything, and it was hard to deal with. Having good memories when you are not 100% happy makes you reject the present and want what was familiar. I think that is what happened.
I felt that I was only interesting because I lived abroad. Without that, I would be just an “ordinary person” like everyone else around me. And I forced myself to be ordinary, I tried. I avoided talking about life overseas. What if I created a character? In truth, I wanted to feel ordinary and get out of the identity crisis.
The other day at Pilates, I met a girl who had lived in the USA for years. We had so much in common, and for a moment it was like only she and I were in the room. And then the bad mood came. It seems that I had nothing to talk about regarding Brazil, or I didn’t know how to connect with people anymore. It was also hard for me to hear people complaining or only talking about everything bad in Brazil. This created so much mental confusion, and it became my number one problem to solve.
Confusion and regret after moving back home
Many times, I regretted coming back. What if I had stayed for years in a remote place, far from everything, just to get a sponsor? But then I remembered the reasons I left, and that comforted me. I know I did the best I could at that moment, and holding on to that made me kinder to myself. I keep repeating: I don’t need to decide anything right now, and maybe this confusion will guide me to my potential.
What feeling foreign is teaching me
Maybe this moment shows me that there are layers in everything, and that not everything is so negative. Maybe sharing my experience can help people who want to travel. Talking about random things from Australia can be an interesting conversation. I could share the strange things about it, even when I was tired of answering questions about kangaroos, the funny part is that in three years, I only saw a kangaroo up close once.
The difficulty of adapting is teaching me deeper things about myself. It has certainly opened paths for me. I don’t want to sound like toxic positivity, but in my most challenging moments, I always learned something. To a certain point, dealing with discomfort and some confusion moves me toward something better. Even all the complaints I hear about insecurity, corruption, and the price of things can be something positive, because they can open the door to a healthy conversation. Unfortunately, my country is very divided between conservatives and progressives, and that adds extra weight to what I am feeling right now. I didn’t see this so openly in Australia.
Feeling weird and insecure about making connections shows me that maybe I developed culturally in things that used to be normal for me. Being flexible to learn and contribute, and not rushing anything, is the best decision. Feeling like a foreigner at home may be just a temporary feeling.
If you feel foreign in both places too
You are not alone. Have you ever felt this way?
Write to me :)
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