I Was an American Expat Living Abroad: It Sucked

On March 7, 2020, a few days after I landed in Europe, I voted in the Democratic global primary. I tried to psych myself up for the occasion by wearing a cute blue beret and a white dress that accentuated my bump. This was before masks were recommended, so I added a splash of red lipstick to complete my patriotic ensemble and headed to the murky basement-cum-polling place. The docent reminded me that it was, after all, a building older than our shared country of origin. The ritual of voting was familiar, and it was a relief to hear so many American voices in one place after seven days of Swiss.As I was leaving, one of the booth volunteers told me that as a person living abroad, my vote counted for up to four times as many delegates as it did in my state of origin. A YouTube video from Democrats Abroad confirmed it; whether you identify as an immigrant or an expat, your voting powers change when you move to another country. I felt a wave of nausea, partly from my pregnancy but also because it felt sickening that I had more say in the path America took from thousands of miles away than other voters did from within its borders. I looked down at my belly and considered what I was running from and what responsibility still sat on my shoulders as an American. When I confided in the other Americans living abroad, they were sympathetic to what life under Trump was like. They nodded and frowned, and then they carried on with plans for brunch and events with clever names like the Bacchus Caucus. To read the front pages from your homeland while living abroad feels like that moment after you wake from a dream of a dead loved one, when you realize how impossibly far away they are and how desperate you feel for a hug. The most popular defense mechanism among expats that I saw was regurgitating the terrible headlines and shaking one’s head in pity or performative shame. But many also simply grew more distant from their homeland the longer they stayed abroad, like getting acclimated to an alpine lake.That summer, the brutal murder of George Floyd sparked protests against the patterns of police brutality that continue to plague the United States. My insular city eventually followed suit. Many of my U.S. friends, particularly in the July 2020 due date groups, warned each other that tear gas is an abortifacient, since protesters were being indiscriminately gassed in cities. I WhatsApped with other expats. “Just stay home,” a few of them said. “Protesting is just for show here.” One came with me to the protest; they were Black and queer, and they didn’t have the luxury of distance I noticed in white expats. Swollen and two weeks from delivery, I panted in the humidity, and they waited with me in the shade when I said I couldn’t breathe. Then they encouraged me to put my mask on since we were non-white femmes at the front of the march and would likely be in photographs.

To live abroad is to become detached, floating in the ether far from the placental roots of a homeland.

I Became Detached and Homesick as an American Expat Living Abroad

Once, I took a philosophy seminar with a college athlete who grew agitated at the generously lenient grades he got on his essays. He told me how it stung to be treated like an inattentive spectator. The swamp cooler droned on while he complained, his words dripping in privilege, and I brushed it off. Later, in Switzerland, I found myself frustrated that the community of expatriates wasn’t demanding I look unflinchingly at the horrors happening on our home soil. Their clemency felt undeserved, and I slowly realized the ways that distance soothes us, the ways it protects us. I guess that now is a strange time to mention my uncle died from police brutality. I didn’t truly confront that until I was far from America. Looking back, I have more empathy for the ways other immigrants handled the pain and trauma of that summer. Many expats were disconnected because they had so much else to occupy their time—like language tests or navigating how to open a bank account abroad, processes that can easily eat up two full days or more. Some spent their days on picnics and postcards while our homeland lurched with grief. To live abroad is to become detached, floating in the ether far from the placental roots of a homeland. This isn’t a glamorous vision but rather one I had as a pregnant mother at high risk of my son detaching and drowning inside of me.When everyone says they’re going to just move abroad, I cringe. I distinctly remember licking Cheeto dust off my fingers in history class, learning all about how people moved to America to escape tyranny. People laughingly referred to former president and failed businessman Donald Trump as a Cheeto Mussolini. When I moved abroad, I realized I had an overly simplistic view of the world. None of the grocery stores in my new city even had Cheetos, which is not a tragedy but an indicator that I didn’t even have a shared cultural vocabulary. I had two variants of homesickness. One was for country; this I felt in my gut. Another was for culture, food, language and people; that I felt in the back of my tongue, where it grew from my throat. I wasn’t familiar with the feeling of sparkling Perrier water. My home city didn’t have an Ikea or an H&M. When I did find a fellow American, they frequently lacked the same cultural capital as me. It added a layer of loneliness to the heavy Swiss winter.

Swiss Laws and Customs Made Life Completely Different

As foreigners who made under $100,000, we didn’t have to pay any taxes the next spring. It was like the U.S. government, which begrudgingly fed me with welfare coupons when I was a child, was now treating me like a much-missed guest. Despite the lies you hear from trust fund backpackers, you need to have a certain level of income to move abroad. I went quite suddenly from being a teacher and the sole breadwinner to being an immigrant on a spousal visa that forbade me from working. It was foreign in and of itself to interact with the Google and HP employees who jetted in and out of 12 countries a year on vacation. Yet even though we were making more money than ever, we were considered poor by Swiss standards, which felt discombobulating. Who can ring up their mother and explain to the woman who’s been a janitor all her life that here, you are considered poor? Since I wasn’t the breadwinner, I wasn’t allowed to see my husband’s side of our shared bank account, a surreal reminder of the rights I had back in the U.S. that I took for granted. At one point, we considered divorce. The pandemic and living abroad had been cruel to us. But when I checked how to file, I found I wasn’t allowed. In fact, they’d confiscate my passport if my husband asked them to, a way to prevent parents in custody battles from absconding with children. If you’ve ever had a hard day where going to the store felt impossible, imagine doing it in another language, getting stared at the entire time, lugging home food you don’t even want with labels you can’t even read. You’ve spent half a paycheck you mistakenly thought was generous, and you constantly have unexpected bills each time you check the mail. We got a bill for $300 each year for the privilege of having a television, even though we didn’t, in fact, have a television. Nobody will pause and explain the laws to you either. If you struggle to place a bottle of wine on the strange conveyor belt and it cracks, remember that you’ll need to ask for help in not just another language but another etiquette system. Everything you do is potentially rude, and every trip to the optometrist or interaction with a plumber is a trial. Most of your loved ones stay behind, and few of them will be green with envy. If you’re lucky, they remember which country you moved to. I looked forward to being removed from the hellscape of America, but I realized far too late that you can’t bring your grandma, your trusted pharmacist or your best friend with you in your suitcase. We lost two grandparents and an uncle. I missed weddings, graduations, funerals. One of my former students, a 14-year-old whose mother was my former midwife, died in his sleep. I wished I could have hugged my student one last time. I had to beg my doctor for a prescription for Benadryl just to sleep.

Everything you do is potentially rude, and every trip to the optometrist or interaction with a plumber is a trial.

Learn How Other Countries Treat Marginalized People Before Moving There

Politics aren’t better. You probably won’t even be able to vote for local elections. What expats rarely tell you is how short the list is of proclaimed paradises, where getting a visa isn’t a dastardly impossibility. Now factor in a scope of freedom far more narrow than politically gotcha headlines would have you believe. You might only read how much minimum wage is or how there are never mass shootings. Nobody tells you when a country doesn’t have any economic opportunities for people of color; some countries won’t let you buy a gun, but they also won’t let you get married if you’re queer. I’m back in the U.S. now by choice. There were dozens of reasons. Among them, my experience was humiliating, alienating and impossibly lonely. Don’t be ignorant of our global interconnectedness. If you’re considering moving abroad in the wake of political events, remember to seek out the experiences of Black, Indigenous and people of color, as well as queer and trans people who’ve moved to your chosen country. I had a fantastic support system out in Switzerland, and I still barely survived. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, and if it is, there are signs in another language that scold you to stay off it. You’d do well to listen.