Increasingly, I find myself missing the Netherlands.
If you talked to me at any point over the last year, you would have heard some variation of the following: “I don’t really like traveling or going out of my comfort zone but…” and I know the part about not liking travel sounds weird but give this blog post a read and you’ll figure out why soon enough. Or hell, if you’ve been following this blog since before I came to college, you’ll know why. One of the central questions of my formative years was how long I’d have to wait until I truly felt at home somewhere. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make Lahore home again, and my trip back after five years of separation during the summer of 2016 proved me right (I made my peace with that pretty much instantly!). But in the interim, I had actively pinpointed Boston as home, and wasn’t disappointed. Boston will always be home.
And so, when I moved to the Netherlands, I was excited but I also went in with the mindset of impermanence. This was a temporary stopover so even if I ended up being extremely homesick or straight-up unhappy, there was an end-date I could rely on. And certainly, my last month in the Netherlands was one where I couldn’t wait for the end-date. Why not? I would see my family again, my brother was going to get married, I would soon be preparing for my last semester of college – there was so much to look forward to that I couldn’t help but be antsy.
But God, was it bittersweet. I didn’t expect the Netherlands to be so welcoming. Rather, I didn’t expect my heart – with its specific idea of “home” – to be so open to leaving a piece of itself with the Netherlands. Six months was not a long time, and I know there is so much I didn’t get to experience about the Netherlands; but I had my routine, and I had cultivated my comforts, my pet peeves, so fully. Every now and then, I’ll be hit with such a dense pang of longing for aspects of those six months. But it doesn’t make me sad or miserable with my current situation. I couldn’t be happier being in Boston (though my current workload could definitely stand to chill out for a hot second). The nostalgia doesn’t hurt, it just reminds me of the fullness of my time in yet another country I say I’ve lived and loved. What’s strange about my time there, though, is the privacy of it. I mentioned in a previous blog post from when I was in the Netherlands that the isolation I felt was really bizarre. Not too long after that, I realized it was because there weren’t many people with whom I was actively, physically sharing that moment in time-space with. For once, this experience was mine and mine along. But the consequence of that is now that I’m back to a familiar old lifestyle, I feel like my experiences in the Netherlands are private and secret. It’s a world only I know, that only I have experienced in its fullness. I had a few friends visit at a couple of points in those six months, but none of them really know of my time in the Netherlands in the way I did and do. My friends there are mine. My workplace there was mine. My time there was mine. My grocery trips there were mine. My meal-prep were mine. The cafe I used to go to to research was mine.
In fact, I hadn’t realized how much of my normal life wasn’t mine. That’s not a bad thing at all. It speaks to another kind of fullness, the fullness of companionship that I am so lucky to have. More than anything else though the Netherlands taught me that I can be happy experiencing something on my own. I don’t really want to go out of my way to emulate the experience again, so you definitely won’t be getting a travel blog out of me any time soon (or ever), but I feel so much more confident in and with myself. I got to travel to Berlin on my own – without access to internet or cellular communication beyond public WiFi – and it was a really good experience. I can succeed on my own!
I can’t explain how badly I needed to know that.
The Netherlands – especially the Hague and Rotterdam – will always hold a wonderful place in my heart. It also feels good knowing that if my career goes the way I hope it does and I end up back in the Netherlands, I’ll be back to a beloved familiar. So, yes, I’ve been missing the Netherlands a lot: the chocolate, the straightforward people, my co-workers and friends that I got to know, my Sundays dedicated almost entirely to hours of meal-prep, visits to the grocery store, CHEAP PRODUCE, Albert Heijn and pepernoten, the view from the beach clubs at Scheveningen, getting lost in Rotterdam, the way the Hague glories as it is bathed in sun, punctual public transportation, the fries… but at the end of the day, I don’t miss the Netherlands as if it’s something gone missing. I revel in having tried something new and falling in love in the process.
But I’ll be damned if you see me post a picture of the Hague on Instagram with the caption Take me back!
Neiha Lasharie 