Here are my point of views regarding the side effects:
1. Your loved ones will be devastated.
Me moving out the house and now living abroad wasn't something new for my family. When I was 11 years old, my parents sent me away to live in a dorm and since then I have been living away from them for as long as I could remember. By the age of 18, I moved interstate and stayed there for 6 years. And now I'm here, in another side of the world.
During the past 17 years I've been living on my own and only came home every once a year. After 17 years, I spent almost 2 years at home with my family and I couldn't take it anymore. I always longed to get away on my own. Of course, I didn't blame my parents for sending me out at such a young age.
When I told Mum I wanted to move to Australia, she was shocked. She didn't see it coming and thought that I would settle down. But after several life-changing things that happened, I knew that I couldn't stay there and need to move out again.
Of course, it wasn't easy for me to leave home again, and leave Mum. Maybe she was devastated to see me leaving, too. Maybe. Because we have never spoken it out openly. Mum and I, we are not the touchy-feel kind of persons. But I knew form the look of her face when sending me out at the airport that she was devastated.
Times went by and she seemed to have accepted my decision to stay where I am right now. She even once said to me, "If this is what you really want, then make it happen." And I will.
2. You'll feel guilty all the time.
So, here I am, living the life that I want. But I suppose that there are always sacrifices I have to make to get what I want. And one of it is the guilty feeling.
She's getting older each day and I should have stayed in her side because I'm the only daughter, and the eldest. I'm supposed to take care of her, yet I chose to leave her in the pursuit of my own better living. This guilty feeling, it pains me sometimes.
Another sacrifice is to watch my nephew growing up through my phone screen. I wasn't there when he was born and I've never hold him, not even once. I watch him through my phone screen from when he was a newborn until now, turning into an active two-year-old kid. But now he knows my face and can say my name, which I'm quite happy about.
Sometimes, I wonder when will I finally get to see him . . .
3. You'll feel really, really lonely.
I can't deny this. It gets utterly, awfully lonely sometimes. Especially at this time around the year. The Stark's saying, winter is coming, which means things will about to get rougher and tougher (and colder, literally). Well, it applies to this loneliness I'm talking about.
I have spent two Christmases, two New Years, two Chinese New Years all by myself, and only Skyped my family back at home.
I do have friends and good friends here. But I also realise that sometimes I have no one to talk to. And I mean talk "talk". When I feel it this way, it feels like the worst loneliness ever.
However, after so long I got used to it. The loneliness. The no one-to-talk-to feeling. I have embraced it and ofttimes I would shut myself out from the world and just be in solitary.
4. You won't fit in anymore.
This is definitely true. I know I have changed so much over the past two years, living abroad on my own. I have somehow adapted to the new culture, new systems, and almost everything. I have had the change of attitude and also somehow the way I see life and how people should live.
I have learned new convictions and beliefs, and I've embraced them fully. I've discovered so many new things that I could ever imagine. I have also found out about my capabilities that I never knew I had. All these seem like a really good thing for me.
But somehow, this has alienated me from the people and place where I came from. (God knows how I can't live without Netflix and Spotify.) Most of the things that I used to feel right about, they just don't now.
Only one thing that hasn't changed, and it's because Mum is tirelessly reminding me: my faith.
5. You'll lose dear friends.
Well, I didn't quite agree with this point. I am now still in contact with some of my close friends back at home, though we don't speak as often as before. But I know that they are there somewhere.
Yes, I couldn't deny that I missed my close friend's wedding last year. But it doesn't mean we cut ourselves off from each other. Because I believe that a good friendship will always find its way to survive.
Until next post.
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