City Living

Palm Trees

Greetings from our beautiful, coastal city!  

We finally moved out of my in-law's home in a little one-horse rural town about an hour-and-a-half away about three weeks ago now.  

This isn't going to be a rainbows-and-sunshine post, so if you're looking for something a bit more uplifting, maybe waiting for a brighter-edged post is a good idea. There is a bright light after the darkness, though, if you want to read through to hear about it.   Fair warning...

I cannot begin to express the feelings I'm experiencing all at once. Remember back when I said we needed to heal from the chaotic, busy, challenging year we've had of preparing our house to sell, then moving across the ocean with our kids? Well, that was before we spent three long months with three relatives who would rather see me roast on an open pit. Now I am finally, at long last, breathing free and loving air far away from their toxic influence.

When we planned this move, we hoped that by moving my husband (and our kids) to his country-of-birth, his family would suddenly realize I am not an ogre (honestly, I swear I'm not). We were hoping relations might improve, and our kids would have a great experience spending time with family here.

Well, the last one has come true, but not because my in-laws have been fabulous to my kids. My kids have their best memories from when their aunts, uncles and cousins have popped by for a visit.

My brother-in-law made it clear from day one that he doesn't care for kids, and in particular thinks our two are unruly and loud (trust me, they are the same as any child, and in fact are very polite about keeping the noise level down when inside).  He also made several derogatory remarks about my youngest, who is autistic. He conspired to put us in the most negative light at every possible opportunity when speaking with his dad (who clearly is as closed-minded as this son). He also whined to his mother constantly about us.

We did everything we could to help out around the house, be quiet and respectful, etc but it was never enough. People felt they could be as moody and rude to us as they liked, but we were expected to plant a smile on our faces every moment of the day and not dare make any requests of any kind that might be construed as a complaint or criticism.  

I only made one request the entire time we were there: please keep screens and doors closed. This is because they live deep in the bushland, where some of the most poisonous snakes slither around (not to mention mosquitos that mean business). You would have thought I made some diva request for only green M&M's to be served. People were already rude to us, but when I made that request they turned it up ten fold and a real s#!t storm resulted. I was called every name you can imagine, and my kids (who were already being ignored half the time) were ignored even more.

I had to endure daily glares and rude remarks, or just being outright ignored.

It was not exactly the warm welcome to a new country that I was hoping for, and it did a great deal of damage to my psyche. I pulled every string I could find to get us an apartment in the city, and here we are. Even the process of moving was done with passive-aggressiveness on their part....until finally we were left alone in our new city to collapse and wonder what the hell we had signed up for when we came up with the idea to move here.

Now for the good news.....we are really loving this city!!! We live right near the beach, about 3 blocks back. We're close to so many things in the city, and our neighborhood is quiet and safe.

We're slowly making friends in the city, and we're enjoying exploring what there is to see and do here.

I am finally feeling a sense of peace washing over me, as we navigate around.  

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As for homeschooling, we had taken off the last two weeks of December to get ready for Christmas. We'll be starting back up again next week. Many kids here take off all of January as well, but I feel like it might help give a sense of "normalcy" to their experiences here.  You have to realize, they were damaged by the chaos at my in-law's home as well. They were treated poorly and had to endure bad attitudes directed squarely at them. Can you imagine being a child and realizing your uncle doesn't like you, or that your grandfather finds you annoying (or worse)? 

My kids need to heal as well, and I figure we'll try to slip gently and slowly back into lesson work as a means to return the stability of the familiar (as it were). If they are just not feeling it, we'll stop and give it another week, but honestly I think it will be good for all of us to let go of the negativity from my in-laws and focus on the exciting things to do here in the city and to remind ourselves that we came here for other reasons as well.  We came here for adventures, to attempt to improve our lives financially, and lastly for more family interactions. Since the latter was damaging to the kids, we will need to limit their exposure to those people while being sure to squeeze every drop of enjoyment out of this place for the next 5-6 years before we decide if we might try another international adventure.

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I swear, life is getting better, despite the challenge and pain of our first three months here. I refuse to let these people bring us down. We hoped for better (much!), but at the end of the day we did give it our best. They may choose to reject us and be incapable of unconditional love, but that doesn't mean we are not WORTHY of love. We are wonderful people just trying to make it in life. Our friends seem to get that...and so, naturally, those are the people we are choosing to spend our time and energy on.

Yeah, I could have predicted this ending....but in reality, they have done us a favor. If they had saved this poor behavior for after we got settled, we might not have been able to immediately realize our mistake and start making the plans we've made for our next adventure. This actually is liberating to realize we are NOT going to stay forever, and that we don't need to feel guilty about having adventures somewhere else. We might not have decided to have other adventures if people had pretended to like us when we got here. We might have just settled into complacency and endured the superficial-ness. This strong rejection and completely inappropriate behaviors towards us made our decision very easy.

Now we can actively plan our adventures here and enjoy them for what they are and try to squeeze as much fun in as we can while we're here. It's a great motivator to enjoy every moment.

I guess, then, everything happens for a reason.