“You’ll Never Survive”

When I decided I was leaving South Africa, the reaction was mixed – to put it lightly.
I had some friends who were ecstatic about my next adventure.
…And then I had some friends who yelled at me, told me I’d be back, and then just stopped speaking to me all together.

It’s now been 9 years, this month, since I immigrated, and I have been back twice. Both times as a tourist. And every single time, I have climbed back on to a plane, and come home to New Zealand.

Simone pointed out that I don’t talk much about what it was like to immigrate. And to put it simply, if you haven’t done it, you don’t actually know. I could sit here and tell you what culture shock is like, how it feels to be dropped into something so alien even though it’s so familiar, the panic attacks, and sleepless nights I had. And you can sit thoughtfully and nod.
But you wouldn’t understand. You’d think to yourself “It’s not that bad. After all, I have lived here all my life, and I’ve managed”.

It’s been 9 years since I left home, and I still don’t talk about it – what it was like, what caused me to leave my family and friends, what I went through in those first two years. I don’t talk about it, because I don’t want sympathy, or to ‘different’, or ‘special’. From my point of view, people do hard things every single day. I give people the cliff-notes version. So far, no one has wanted to know more than that.

Because I don’t talk about it, a few of my friends, colleagues and acquaintances, have taken to assuming a whole lot about me. I notice it most when I let people close to me in on my dreams, my goals for my future, and they respond with “you’ll never make it”, “you wont like that”, “you wouldn’t be able to handle that”.

From telling me I am terrible with money, to not being able to cope with a different work load to even hating living in a different country, it seems I have almost heard it all. Each time, the fact that I immigrated and set up a new life for myself here, being conveniently ignored.

So no, I don’t talk about my emigration for South Africa and my immigration into New Zealand. I point out the differences, I point out the funny side of things, and I point out the terrible things being done to my beloved ex-county. But I don’t talk about the sacrifices, the challenges, the hardships.

Because if I did, well, if you haven’t done it, you simply would not understand.