Busting The Myth: Once You Move Abroad, Your Life will Be Sorted

In 2024, only three months after getting married, I moved to the Netherlands from North India. I’d grown up to believe that life abroad was more organized and somehow more sorted. So when my husband got an opportunity to work in the Netherlands as a researcher, we decided to begin our married life together in a new country.

When we arrived, I though the difficult part of life was already behind me. I was married, my husband had a respected job, and we were about to begin our happily ever after in Europe – all proof that my life was falling into place. What I didn’t yet know was how moving abroad would unsettle my sense of identity, independence, and belonging.

Soon it was time for my husband to start going into the office. Every morning, I’d make his lunch box, say goodbye and then find myself wondering, what about me? Should I make myself a lunch box? Where would I even take it?

I’d always lived with my family back in India, where someone was usually always around to talk to. Suddenly, I was spending entire days alone in a house that didn’t yet feel like mine, wondering what I was supposed to do.

The whole first week, I regretted the move. The loss of my career was already difficult to accept, and now I was also far away from everyone and everything familiar. Within a week of unpacking my bags, the exhilaration of living abroad had been replaced by loneliness and self-doubt. I kept asking myself: where is this organized, sorted life everyone promised I’d find abroad?

When familiar things became unfamiliar

One day, I went to a supermarket to buy milk. In India, milk was simply milk. We mostly used buffalo milk for tea, yogurt, butter, paneer, and other dairy products. But in the supermarket, I saw full-fat milk, semi-skimmed milk, flavored milk, almond milk, soy milk, and several other kinds I’d never seen before.

I stood in front of the shelves translating words on my phone. I didn’t have the confidence to ask whether they sold buffalo milk.

Eventually, I called my mother and showed her the products, asking which one she thought I should buy. Standing there with my phone in my hand, translating one milk label after another, I felt frustrated that I still needed help with something as ordinary as buying milk. A reminder that I no longer knew how everything worked.

Another day, I became ill with a high fever. I was alone at home and knew I needed to eat something. I got out of bed and tried to cook, but my head was aching so badly I couldn’t finish cooking. I stood in the kitchen, hungry and in pain, and began to cry. I missed my mother terribly.

Back home, my parents would notice when I was unwell. But when my parents called, I didn’t let on because I didn’t want them to worry about their daughter living so far away. After the call, I allowed myself a moment to feel sad, before picking myself up and carrying on. That day, I understood that life abroad does not arrive already sorted. Sometimes, even the smallest forms of care have to be created by you.

The Change I Misunderstood

Before moving abroad, I noticed that people who left India often became quieter and less involved in family life. I wondered whether living abroad had changed them or made them less attached to home. But after moving to the Netherlands, and gradually visiting other European countries, I began to understand the cultural differences. People here have their own rhythm. Everyone is extremely busy with their day-to-day work, appointments, household tasks, and plans that were made weeks in advance. And after living in both cultures, I’d say both have their own joyfulness.

Back home, the culture I knew continues on without me. Sometimes I join via a video call. Other times, I see the photographs after the fact. On Diwali, a prominent festival in India, I returned from my evening walk, switched on a few small lights, and ate something sweet – small moments to mark the occasion. Without noticing exactly when it happened, I also began planning my days, managing things by myself, and becoming quieter. I’d not grown distant from home. I’d simply started living a new way of life, one I had previously misunderstood.

Swap “Sorted” For Small Joys

The Netherlands has given me many things I am grateful for: safety, independence, new places to see, new people to meet, and a chance to understand life from a different angle. But even with all this, some evenings I still miss the life I left behind. I think the biggest myth I carried with me was that once I moved abroad, everything would slowly fall into place. But it didn’t happen like that. In many ways, I had to start again. I had to learn how to speak in a new place, how to ask for help without feeling small, how to understand letters, medicines, train routes, shops, work, festivals, and even sickness. There were days when I looked completely fine on the outside, but inside I was still trying to figure out how to live here.

Living abroad taught me how to care for myself and how to create small versions of home when the real one was far away. It gave me a new life, but it also took away the comfort of being known without having to explain myself. Living abroad my life was not suddenly sorted or more organised. But I am slowly learning how to sort it, one small step at a time.

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