Well, here it goes folks. I’ve waited a couple of months before posting about this for a few reasons but in part because I just haven’t had the mental energy to write outside of journaling. One of the cultural differences that I’ve noticed in living here is how anything remotely personal makes people squirm, and this topic has made several of my British acquaintances squirm, much to my amusement. It’s a little different with those who I’ve become closer friends with because it’s either more acceptable to discuss these things when you’re closer or they’re just used to me (I’ll need to ask them which one it is). I’ve gotten used to this and am aware that I am just simply… American. We tend to talk more freely about these things in the US. There aren’t many topics that are off limits with me. I’ll talk about damn near anything, except don’t ever ask me to guess your age, that’s a game I refuse to play. Other than the age thing I’ll talk about it all. Oh, so what was I talking about now?

I’m moving back to the USA. WHAT?!!! I know. Ryan and I are splitting up. WHAT?!!! I know. We are still on good terms, we are both heartbroken, this is not something either of us really anticipated happening after nearly 17 years. What happened? Nothing. Nothing happened. There was no major event to prompt this and no it had nothing to do with us being together too much during the pandemic since he was still out of the flat working. It was my choice to separate and the reasons would take far more time to explain than I have time for right now. I have a peace about moving forward, though I am still hanging out on the struggle bus waiting for my stop.

Ryan will stay in Scotland. He has an extraordinary support network out here and he’s currently getting a good amount of freelance work. He loves it here and has no desire to return to the US. My visa depends on his, so I have to leave. My employer wanted to sponsor me but the government guidelines for sponsorship just didn’t quite match up to make that happen. Some people have told me to just not report myself, as required by law, and stay illegally. I can’t in good conscience do that. I plan to come back annually and I don’t want to fuck that up by getting banned from the UK. I just want to live honestly, with nothing to hide.

I will say if one more person from the US tells me how horrible the US is and that I shouldn’t come back I will spit fire at them. I’m doing this crazy thing where I’m choosing to have a positive attitude regardless of where I end up. It’s taken me many years to be able to do that, no lie. I think it took me moving across the world to understand that I choose how I react to my surroundings. There are a lot of problems here as well that people in the US don’t seem to be aware of… A LOT of problems that haven’t even made their way into my blog. Despite the problems here I still love this country. I never left the US to escape. I left the US because I wanted to be here and it was important to me to live internationally at some point. I’ve done it, I got to live in Scotland for a little over two years and that’s pretty awesome. I’m excited to come back to visit, where I’ll be in a better position to actually travel around more.

There are a few things I will really miss about Scotland, one of those things will be my amazing friends. I felt so alone for quite a while after moving and I never would’ve guessed I’d end up with so many wonderful people in my life. One of my friends came over the other day to cheer me up a bit (it’d been a rough week) and we drank gin for seven hours, ate waffles and just talked and I can’t express to you how blessed I felt. A few weeks ago another friend picked me up so I could spend the weekend with her at her house on the beach. Another friend had brought over food a few weeks ago and we just snacked and chatted for a couple hours. God, I really will miss these people. I will really miss them.

I am looking forward to returning to the US. I’m looking forward to being near my mom. Even if I elect to live on the other side of the country, I know that if something awful happened and flights were cancelled I could still drive to her. I’ve done the drive a few times, it’s not so bad. I will begin working full time for my US employer that I’ve worked part time with over the last year and I’m really excited about this particular job and I absolutely love my boss. She has been a good friend and a great boss. I’m looking forward to finally having reached my goal of being able to truly work remotely full time. I can travel, live wherever I want, have my dog by my side all day. I’ve been working from home for both jobs since March but my Glasgow job inevitably would’ve returned to the office at some point. I look forward to seeing what way my path winds next. I honestly don’t have the slightest clue as to what my future will look like. I’ll land with family for a few months and then I’ll travel around a little bit in search of my new home. I’ll probably stay in Washington state but am considering being way up north by the Canadian border or heading over to Eastern Washington, basically away from the Seattle area.

Things are over the top stressful trying to get out of here right now. I can’t even express to you how difficult trying to do all of this during a pandemic is. I’m trying to get the dogs out as soon as possible and then I’ll follow them. I can truly say this is one of the most difficult times I’ve ever gone through. Mentally and physically I just feel completely broken. I have so much to do and feel there’s not enough time in the day. This post is getting pretty long so I’ll post about the moving process another time, maybe the next post.

Well, this is my expat blog, what happens now that I’ll be a repat? I’ll probably blog a little about the moving process and then I’ll likely just start posting about whatever the hell is going on in my life at any given time. I plan on doing a few divorce/separation posts, as I’m finding there are some very interesting things about the whole process… it’s weird, it really is. So, yes, here we are, coming to the end of this journey. Won’t you continue to join me on my next adventure?