repatriationnation - Tumblr blog

[repatriationnation]

Jan12023

Jan 1 2023, the uk and waking up with brain fog. A hypochondriac might google the symptoms. Im not but i do. Its realted to a state of mind where the brain shuts down partially whne theres too much going on. Present tense thunking is skuggish and a feeling that you will never again br able to string coherent sentences together is worrigly acute

Repatriation is a gentle jenga that eep removing blocks and replacing at the top of the stack. My wife and i are 14 years deep into leaving oir country of birth and another expat friend asked that i documnet our joirney back to blighty. We he said vlog, but i will draw the line at words with an occasional piece of content

The reentry jenga has gottten to me. The decision to jump ship from NL was a small one, but the executional logistics that follow are a myriad unknown unknowns. I always preferred a myriad of, but grammer police (my wife) have shut me down on numerous occasions

as a self confessed grammer and spelling twat, penning prose is a worryingly shouty thing for an introvert to do

but maybe of specialist interest to the large number of modern mensen who choose to leave their country and wonder about what going back tonyhe place tgey call home might be like

the information stack that has overwhelmed me now consists of :

Sold apartment

deadline end of march

nowhere to live past that

no job in uk

no school organised for two childrne

Potential that iq has been permanently lowered by above

the present tense jumps around and we fly back to tge betherlands. The airpprt dance. My scattiness means that im patting my pckets for passports 10 times as often as i usually do, staring blankly with time dilating atound me as i watch helplessly as my suitcase gets kicked around a bus and my wife has to fix. Vows dedicate that we step up when our other half flags like this. Well done wife person

Home donest feel like home. I sound pretentious when i say that its a place i hold the key for. My wife tells me that if yiu write something and dwell in the compacency of how clever it is you should delete it straight away. Its subjective but i am sure there are sentnces i shoul delete if i abide by thsi rule. Unedited is raw and more honest though

2 jan fog remains but tye list is unchanging. Prespective shift on the stack remians unchanged. Its overwhelming

im at the office and blimdly call two colleagues in tge uk before one politely asks me if i know its bank holiday there. The fog clears for one licid moment and i say a british sorry. The dutch dont get carry over bank holidays. Something we shall not miss. But the cheese we will and other cultural take aways.

repatriation contains reverse clutre shock. Things yiu believed to be unchanged have morphed and vice versa. The friends yiu once drank with now have moved to more rural locations. The person writing this has been off the sauce for 10 years. Tumblr was around back then but tiktok wasnt. Shit has chnaged in digital dn analog worls

colleagues are looking at me like i have a screw loose and i can barely put an email together. Should probably have gone home but its the first day of my repacement starting at my office. Hello im here to take yiur job that yiu havent given up yet, legally nor mentally

The man is kind. I know him of old and like him, but he is a more mature version that seems to ha e everything figured out. This is a man who once brought me tea and now takes my job. Its a weird but stoic initial handover i give. He has not seen me for a while, knows i dint drink, and is probably wondering where my brain has eroded to

me too

but i do my best and bid an early farevewell as i hop on my aging cycle , every traffic light of a joirney that is miscle memory feeling like a sizeable decison. But i stay alive and my key goes in the door once again.

t feels a liitle more familiar but still a few dgrees removed from reality

X