Home in a new country

[alpin]

Five years ago I moved from my country of origin (England) to my new country of residence (Sweden), with my partner, who had taken a new job there. 

Since then, I’ve visited a few times, to see friends and family and attend medical appointments (private healthcare for transition-related surgeries, to skip the long queues and uneven results of the swedish public system). Two years ago, I decided to stop spending christmas in the UK, since travelling at that time of year is always extremely expensive and stressful. My partner and I have been trying to orient our lives less around visiting people who live elsewhere and more around our own preferences.

This summer I spent three weeks in England, none of it in places I would choose to spend my time if not for people I needed to see who lived there. I realised that the country has become foreign to me. I think of Sweden as home, I feel that the city I live in is more emotionally home to me than the town I was born in. I love this place powerfully.  

This freaked me out. I spent the first two weeks grappling with the terror that someone might force me to move back there, that I would never escape it, that I would go back to my old, unhappy life and the oppressive, pervasive hopelessness that had become so apparent as a national trait. My friends and family assume that of course I must prefer England, and sometimes that of course I must plan to move back to England eventually, and I resent both incorrect assumptions. In my absence, England has moved politically rightwards more overtly, which horrifies me. Even if it had not, I prefer the swedish ways of doing things, the climate, the city layout, the infrastructure. I say this even though I warn others than being an immigrant is grindingly tough and the swedes are notably unwelcoming. 

This sense of home casts new light on my life here, specifically I feel like a bad immigrant. I took language lessons but didn’t practice, so I can understand enough to get by but can’t keep up in conversation, can’t watch a movie or a play, can’t listen to the radio. I have to keep asking people to speak english with me. I remember when I first moved here, I met a colleague of my partner who had lived here for 15 years and learned no swedish at all. I remember boggling at his arrogance. It seemed stunningly rude and selfish. I worry that I am being rude and selfish. I don’t keep up with news or media, nationally or locally. I don’t know much about politics or culture. In guilt, now, I have added news media in simple swedish and english to my social media feeds. I haven’t even visited any more of the country than the city I live in and two other nearby cities. I keep trying to ask my partner to do so, but life has been getting in the way for five years. 

I don’t have a strong social circle here, but I do have a weak one. Most of them are primarily interested in my partner. My friendships withered with the pandemic, as did my attempts to take up social hobbies. Visiting my old friends in England made it clear that they all think of us with warmth, but also that their lives have moved on and we’re not really part of them anymore. My family, too, have made it clear that in their eyes, I left, so I must make all the compromises in our relationship. I visit them, they don’t visit me. I keep track of the time difference, they don’t think about it. They think the same of all our other family members who are scattered across the globe. Maybe I should reach out to my cousins who also live abroad more often.

This country has flaws. Am I simply able to feel more detached from them because it’s not truly mine? The flaws of my country of origin do pain me. The flaws of both make me angry and sad. 

We have plans to leave this country. Does my ability to grow to love a place mean that I will come to consider the new country home too, or will I be uprooted and lose two homes? Do I just love this city so much because I know I will soon lose it?