I am in awe of where the journey takes us, and even more so of how little we can prepare ourselves for the possible outcomes in each choice we make. I don't regret my choices. I fell in love with a Norwegian. I boldly chose to cast my world to the side in order to join his, to embrace his as mine. I have lived in Norway for over three years and can say without hesitation that living here, hardships included, has been one of the most rewarding paths I could have chosen. Funny analogy given my current state, but acclimating to Norway reminds me of marriage. It requires love and admiration, patience and respect, listening carefully, the cultivation of both what you are willing to give to it and what you need to do for yourself to be your best within it. It requires the choice to love it, all of it, even on the days when you aren't sure you can endure it. And when you think you have seen or learned all there is to know, it will surprise you with something new and beautiful, and you will fall in love with it all over again.
Norway is a beautiful country. It is a small country full of beautiful, interesting, and dynamic people who, at times, are difficult to get to know and, from experience, entirely worth the effort. Its culture is an ancient one, with a long and arduous history that peeks through the seams of society, a society rich in strength, patience, resilience, practicality, endurance, wisdom, experience, and a youthful sense of exploration. It is a country of trials, at least for someone coming from the land of the many conveniences I was blessed to experience. The weather can tug at your very being, from a darkness you can lose yourself within, a cold that can seep into your veins and seize your core, a steady rain that can, after days upon end, swallow you whole, and an awakening, a rebirth that can captivate your every sense and make you feel as if you just stepped through the gates of Heaven. It is a country of landscapes that take you high above the ground floor, both in actuality and in spirit. Norway is westernized, yet entirely different from the United States, full of nuances and subtleties that tell the true story of what its society, homes, families, attitudes, and beliefs are built upon. To me, it is nothing other than a love story.
I am a patriotic person and will always carry America with me, both in my passport and stamped on my heart, but I am also now tied to this beautiful, trying, and sometimes frustrating existence. Only I am tied to this existence with a key piece of my plan missing. Instead of a husband and a son and a large, closely-tied family, I am beginning a new journey with a beautiful son, a friend, and an extended closeness to a family I both love and feel I have barely gotten to know. It comes without explanation that I am sad. My heart hurts for those losses, for the changes I didn't prepare myself to endure.
I can't say that I transitioned well in moving here. All of us expats do it differently. I have friends whose waters barely rippled when they dove headfirst. I have others whose waves are greater than mine. My journey is my own and it is something I have to own, to take responsibility and accountability for, regardless of the advice I am given. And I am given quite a lot of advice. My family, friends, my ex, and his family all are wonderful and supportive people and, while I often feel lonely in the steps, I know I am not completely alone in those I choose to take. Their support, their advice, is always there for the taking. The decisions I make are not entirely mine either, as my friendship with my ex allows us the benefit of sound-boarding with one another, which we must do regularly and openly.
However, I am, due to various circumstances, under somewhat of a deadline to make a choice. It is not a lesser of two evils, but a decision between two great loves. I loved my career, independence, security, comfort and conveniences, support network, and the financial stability in my former life. I assumed those things would be founded just as easily in this new world and, as stated, didn't prepare myself for the alternatives. I didn't prepare myself for a 14-month long process of obtaining a residency permit. I didn't prepare myself for the immediate and ever-deepening financial strain that we would incur. I couldn't have known that my education and former career would offer me so little in terms of opportunity here. I didn't foresee over two years of being at home with my son, although I dearly cherish that I was given it. And I could not have predicted that a marriage I did not question would come to an end. As those things have all taken place, I am now alone, yet without a full sense of independence. I have acquired the language skills necessary to give me a place in society, but my comfort is far from fully-formed. I don't have financial stability or the conveniences that come with a career. I do, however, have a network of friends and family that make my existence here not only possible, but pleasurable. And I have a beautiful son whose laughter and joy gives my life a daily purpose and direction.
I don't want to be indecisive. I recognize that the choices I must make, namely whether to stay or go, must be mine to own. I do not want to be forced in one direction or the other, whether by circumstance or red tape or anything else standing in my way telling me that I can't or must. And when I take the time to review the options, the pros and cons, I find myself returning to the same questionable beginning and indecisive end. My son has only known life here. His father, my dear friend, is here. Their family, who are still a part of my heart and family, are here. The friendships I have built in the past three years are as rewarding and well-founded as any I could have imagined. I have very little other than that to secure a spot for me in the landscape. For me, given the option of returning to my family, long-time friends, stable career, mother-tongue, and vast modern conveniences, living here is choosing the path of more resistance. Yet I feel I have unfinished business. However mixed and muddled between love and pride, I cannot imagine my life with weakened and forever-distanced ties to this place. I haven't succeeded here by many definitions and sometimes I wonder if all the trials, both older and more recent, are signs telling me to return to my old life. My heart is not so sure that is true, in part because when I left the United States, I did so wholeheartedly, without question, and with a complete disregard for the possible worst-case scenarios. But I did it...and I faced some of those scenarios...and I am still here, still standing, still refusing to cave simply because I wasn't dealt an easy hand. Were I to leave Norway, it would be in no way wholeheartedly...not yet.
There is a reason Norway is considered, year after year, to be one of the happiest countries on Earth. I can't yet give you a list of all the reasons as to why that is, mainly because I have not yet been able to explore each and every benefit this country has to offer. What I can tell you is that living here enters your heart, it becomes a part of you. This country takes you away from many of the things you once thought you couldn't live without and it shows you what it means to live a pure, a rich, a less-complicated and simultaneously more-complicated life. It comes with faults and hardships and idiosyncrasies that, at times, are confusing and maddening. It pushes you, challenges you, both in its subtle and blatant variations, and when you conquer them, overcome, survive them, you wear a badge of pride. All of it, the good and the bad, comes with a charm that I find wholesome and enchanting.
Given all these wonderful things about Norway, I do miss home. I traveled with Baby C to spend 3 weeks at home over the holidays and was so happy, so at ease, so comfortable that I was actually frightened at how simple it would be to emotionally transition back into life there. Every comfort was at my fingertips, so much so that it was painstaking to board the plane and return to sadness, loneliness, and strain. My family, my friends, my career...are all just a choice away. Oh!, how I wish I weren't choosing something away in whichever path I take. How I wish "home" were an easier definition.
I am asking for guidance, not from you per say, but from the universe. Writing to you, telling you about this plane of indecision, is my way of sending a little energy into the world and asking for guidance. In the meantime, I could use a little silent support as we move forward with choosing a future that will affect so many people, all of whom I love and cherish deeply. An old favorite came to me tonight...a poem I spent many years living by...and it seemed to fit.
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
