I often think living as an accidental foreigner is a little bit like having a love affair.
The first stages can be incredibly exciting, interesting, exhausting and intense. The feelings are high high or low low, but the feelings are definitely there. A certain privileged feeling of being somewhere special, unique even lovely... which somehow passes on its magic to self and I become those things to. Projection has its place.
Then comes the reality check. The, Oh! so that's what you're like in the morning, and before you've brushed your teeth, and after a hard night. So now I see how you cope when things get tough or I ask too many questions or look for understanding or feel needy. The comparison with former lovers, former 'places we've lived'. We start to get amnesia and forget the worst of the past, and fall in love with our re-told stories of past lives, places, loves and experiences. Love has its magic formulas.
At the core, we feel lost. Lost in ourselves. Who are we in this great new love?
Reality is a great hairy monster that we either be-friend all over again and fall in love with in a new, invigorated and more real way than before or, we never quite recover.
The second wave is never as intense, but either the feelings grow deeper, or you come to the realisation that infatuation still has a footprint in your life.
Where you live is not just about the space we occupy it's about the people, the energy, the ethos, the 'feeling' we have when we are there even if we can't exactly name what it is. Living as an accidental foreigner asks us to fall in love with where we live, or at least be open to exploring the options of love.
We should never feel we've failed to love enough in a relationship, nor should we fear falling out of love. Love is incredibly individual, although sometimes it is an exercise in faith, hope and forgiveness. And I don't say those things lightly.
If you don't 'love' the person you are with and/or the place you are in and have kept open the door of love in either situation, then the questions might be: 'Does it matter?' If yes: 'What now?'
