The pandemic is bloody terrifying and the strangest thing that most of us have ever lived through. We are ALL really copping it right now to a relative degree and I am both comforted and horrified by the fact that the ENTIRE world is living through this too.
For some people, this pandemic is really, unfathomably terrible and getting worse so I am aware of my privilege, but I really wanted to write something about this weird time. I was thinking for ages about how to get the ball rolling and considered starting with a “10 reasons to love lockdown”. After rethinking this I decided that its lightness might blow-over something I have been feeling strongly since COVID-19 hit and that many others might be feeling too: anxiety, and more specifically, expat pandemic anxiety.
(I am going to interchange between the terms expat and immigrant in this blog post to quietly (or not so quietly!) acknowledge the stickiness of choosing one and not the other)
There has been a lot of reporting online about the huge mental health risk that this pandemic has sparked and anxiety will be felt to different degrees by most people. Anxiety will come through financial struggles, being isolated and the huge health crisis that the world is currently facing. All of these are HUGE for so many people, but I wanted to highlight the extra layer of anxiety that the pandemic is having me as an immigrant – I know many of you who are reading this are also living overseas or are planning to make a move soon. Things might be feeling a bit wobbly for you right now and I want to let you know that I have been feeling it too.
Things might be feeling a bit wobbly for you right now and I want to let you know that I have been feeling it too.
As someone who grapples with levels of anxiety, I have struggled with my life as an immigrant in different ways throughout the nearly 5 years since I left the UK. Living overseas was a real struggle for me emotionally for a long time (I wrote a blog post all about suffering from homesickness a couple of years ago) as I found it hard to be away from my family, hard to miss so many important events and difficult to envisage a future without my home country in it.
I carry this homesick with me at all times with highs and lows, although since writing that blog post, I have found some ease to my life in New Zealand and the main thing that has helped me heal my homesickness has been that old friend that we know even better these days: time.
Through time, I have stopped feeling so sad about expat life and developed a mindset of: “what’s the worst that can happen, Josie? Flying home is so easy if you need to go home, you can.” I have also developed practical solutions to these worries, like opening a special bank account that always has $2000 in it so that should I need to get home quickly, I have the money for a flight.
However, in spite of my pre-pandemic calm mindset and money set aside, I would have a recurring pesky thought that would come into my brain every now and again: “imagine if something crazy happened, flights stopped and I couldn’t fly home EVER again.” Of course, I would push it right out, thinking “don’t be so SILLY Josie – that could never happen, they will never stop flights!”
But, here we are – IT HAS REALLY HAPPENED! COVID-19 means that all international travel has pretty much stopped.
IT HAS REALLY HAPPENED! COVID-19 means that all international travel has pretty much stopped.
Of course, I know these restrictions are likely to only be short to medium term and things will get slowly back to normal at some point, but it has forced me to question my comforting mindset and to come face to face with an uncertainty that I thought would never happen.
We, as a western society, are so used to having everything at our fingertips and even if just for the moment, this has been taken away. All our creature comforts and social fabric is currently broken. This is scary.
No doubt this pause will have some positive outcomes too. Many countries with lockdown are already experiencing a huge drop in air pollution due in part to the grounding of flights and it is likely that this could never have been tested without necessity. We are being forced to look at our lives and what is important. As someone who fully supports action against climate change, I realise how this sits as a stark contradiction to needing to travel on a jet from one side of the world to another at regular intervals. This is the contradictory lifestyle I chose, and one that might not be quite so easily picked in the future.
Despite the grounding, I am reassured by the fact that international air travel will likely exist again, people will always want to fly and there is money to be made so it won’t be gone forever. Perhaps a positive change from the pandemic will be that the cheap “willy-nilly” flights will be over which will help to reduce pollution but we will still be able to travel when we need to, albeit with a lot more consideration for where we are going and how many flights we can afford to take.
I, along with many others will just be hoping that time stands still for a bit and we do not need to get home in the midst of a pandemic and that getting home becomes simple again. My thoughts go out to all those thousands of people who are really truly stranded in countries all over the globe, who are desperately trying to get home at this insane time, for them, this worry is their current reality.
As with most things, to know I am not alone is some relief, a simple Google search tells me that there are 244 million people living as immigrants around the world. I am sure that many others like me, will be feeling the anxiety of being more cut off physically than usual from our home countries. But this is only for the time being. And thank goodness for all the amazing tech we have to keep us connected. Funnily enough it has become easier to connect with loved ones as they are using face-time apps more frequently because now everyone is connecting in exactly the same way no matter how close we live to one another. This social distancing aspect does have some benefits for us living overseas.
a simple Google search tells me that there are 244 million people living as immigrants currently. I am sure that many others like me, will be feeling the anxiety of being more physically cut off than usual from our home countries for the time being.
Expat pandemic anxiety is not a life or death worry, but it is still a worry that I wanted to acknowledge….
Sending love to you all out there. People everywhere are in tricky situations right now and I wish the best for everyone. Times are tough, but things WILL get better. They always do. Stay Safe.
