It is not easy to leave everything and change country
Give up work, family, friends and certainties. Clearly if you do it at 18-20 you live the experience in a certain way: you will feel nostalgia, but surely the enthusiasm and hope will be the dominant emotions. Doing it at 30-35, on the other hand, means having a lot of weight on your shoulders. Your life is already built, you have habits and points of reference that you are missing. Once you decide to move, doubts and fears pass through your mind, and you see not only the positives and the exciting aspects of moving, but the negatives as well.
Yet, whether it is your choice, your partner's needs or any other reason, there are elements that you most likely have not considered. But that you will discover once you leave Italy. I want to share with you thereand 5 best things I learned about moving abroad.
Moving abroad: dreaming in another language
As there aren't many countries in the world where you will be able to speak Italian (excluding certain cantons in Switzerland), you will have to learn a new language. Probably not from scratch, but in any case you will soon realize that - unless you are a native speaker - the impact will be difficult. You will not understand well, it will seem to you that they all speak too quickly, you will often remain silent or at most you will mumble something that will not live up to what you want to say. In conclusion, it will take you a lot of time and effort to speak fluently.
But when it happens, after a few months on average, you will find that you are able to switch without interruption from Italian to the other language and that your thoughts, most of the time, are articulated in the new language. Indeed, after a while you will not remember, unless after thinking about it for a long time, how certain words are said in Italian. Instead, you will come up with their translation. Sooner or later you will also happen to dream in the other language. This will be the signal: you did it, you can now say that your linguistic competence is similar to that of a native! A great satisfaction, really. It is a skill that few have.
Moving abroad: participating, sharing and getting to know
Even if you write or phone every day to the friends you left in Italy, you keep them updated via Facebook on what you are doing and read about their news, you try to follow their lives as much as possible, at some point there will be a departure. If not from the point of view of affection, at least in a practical sense. Of course, it will be a pleasure to meet again every time you return to Italy. But the confidence and closeness that was there, every time it will take you days to recover it. And after a few years it will be lost forever. This will soon prompt you to search new people to meet and hang out with in your new city and looking for opportunities to make friends (very useful in my opinion Meet Up, a portal to create groups and encourage meetings).
Le opportunities are not lacking. There are groups that have the same interest and that meet periodically. Community of immigrants abroad. People you met during some training course or at work. Each then finds his ways and his tools. What is astounding to me is the fact that you would never have thought about joining a group, hanging out with completely strangers, or being friendly in new contexts. You wouldn't have thought about it if it hadn't been because, being catapulted into a whole new world, you needed to open up to others and start over in creating a social network. See it how a great opportunity, which you would not have exploited if you had stayed in Italy.
Moving abroad: loneliness
This may seem like a negative, but it isn't. Or at least not entirely. Of course, the degree of loneliness you will experience once you move depends on many factors. For example if you are with your family / partner or with some friends or on your own. But either way - it happened to me that I moved in with my fiancé, but it's something every expat I've spoken to has told me about - you will feel the loneliness.
You will be able to react in two ways. Try at all costs to fill in the gaps and distract yourself or welcome it and face it. I tried the first solution, afraid of the negative emotions I was experiencing. Then I realized that I had to let go, acknowledge that loneliness was part of my new life and try to get something positive out of it. It is not a pleasant feeling. But it helps to understand what you are made of and what potential you have.
Moving abroad: getting back into the game
If you move abroad, you will hardly have the same job and the same routine. And this will give you a nice one shock, will allow you to leave old habits and build a new life. Change is not easy, we all resist, out of fear, mental laziness, lack of stimuli. So I think having a push (and moving is a big push) is the best, and easiest, way to start. It is an opportunity to try to live life as you would like. Clearly we have to deal with reality. But this does not mean that you will not be able to transform the habits, daily gestures, times and ways of your day. In order to make them a little more to your size and close to your desires.
Moving abroad: you can do it!
This is truly the best lesson that can be learned from an experience abroad. Even if you only moved for a few months / years. You can do it. You can do it to rebuild your life away from your certainties. You can make it to change your future. To find new friends and interests. TO see the world with new eyes. For me this feeling was intoxicating and it definitely improved the confidence I have in my abilities. Priceless.
