Isn’t it usually those extra windy nights, when even the most thick-skinned feel like a waterless well? Everybody experiences discrete episodes of feeling out of place, but there are just some nights when all unsaid replies, every offhand comment, all the people choking you as they exist and Murphy’s Law, with its ceaseless chase to make you its finest example, encircles you endlessly.
If we were in a children’s story, the easiest getaway would be disappearing. But this dear life—I don’t have to explain further, do I? Let me, though, help defog things a bit. You’re most likely feeling out of place because you are out of place. So, if you’ve made up your mind to leave, walk with me through this fellow out-of-place-feeler approved manual on getting to a place decent enough to breathe.
Step 1: Make a list as long as possible of all the reasons why you want to leave.
Trust me, navigating the search for your next destination, means of livelihood there, immigration hustles—and don’t even get me started on the ticket prices! —plus, sieving all the cities on the globe to find the most fitting one, you will find yourself looking for a How to Live Without Breathing guide instead. But no, there’s no going back.
Unless you want to live like a broke chocolate taster who has diabetes, listen to me—and list every reason. Allow me to add, this is just part of the give-up series, all thanks to this dear human head. Self-doubt? Say less. Afterthoughts? Say even less. The only way to escape unscathed from your internal summoned-up courtroom, is to be very well prepared with all means to defend your decision.
Step 2: Squeeze out what you can from that visa for as long as you can.
The experience might not have been the best one, but it’s still a place you earned a visa to and flew for hours to reach, so go to every TikTok-famous spot and savour the best restaurants. Make use of all the facilities available, take a million pictures and act like a tourist while you’re there. Stack enough memories to remember you were once not welcomed somewhere, and still there was nothing you didn’t do to love the place.
Step 3: Make your minority your authority.
Some things are usually far too out of reach, and our arms can only be extended so much. In the case of people, you could be twinning with them and they would still remind you that you’re a grain of salt in a pile of sugar—they just can’t take you. Workplace mistreatment or social isolation in forms of improper service at restaurants, difficulty in finding apartments as a foreigner—it is not supposed to be tolerated. Exercise your rights and you can legally request trial on the sources of discrimination you faced.
Step 4: Come to terms with this reality.
The ordeal begins when somebody comes and paints your sky in the shade of the ground. The paint, too, has to be the most asthmatic pigment you’ve ever sniffed. Your mind shows you who you could be and eyes show you your foot on the ground: strangely unfamiliar. It’s been a long time since you left. All five stages of grief come and pity you thoroughly. Denial, when you think you could live through this alienation. Anger, when you hate the idea of ever stepping back on the ground. How will your foot ever move on a place like that? How will you wear the clothes of this land? Bargaining, when you try to negotiate time between the ground and the cloud. You hoped it could happen. Irrespective of it’s potential impossibility, you hope. Depression—it has to be an ally of love, because why else was I so violently in love with this country only now? Last came acceptance. It was vaguely visible, so faint you only see it when you can and don’t when you can’t. Its presence is like a breather or the word “finally”, but rather soft than spry.
Step 5: Remember to wave goodbye.
Even places where everything brittles but never blooms load us up on patience and resilience. Even the pretty ages that seemed to have drained away turn out to have made us much more competent than when we first started out. The ability to pick yourself up and move out demands courage, and having the heart to seek the world is commendable. Your heart must be dedicated to that, so turn again, wave goodbye and make sure that despite your experiences, you can smile thinking about this little piece of earth you’re leaving.
I hope you make the world yours wherever you go. Breathe well and goodbye!