Yes indeedy, understanding one's Reasons - and that they aren't just Excuses - is helpful.
Also, your Reasons cut me, man, they really cut me. Or at least poke me painfully in not entirely open but certainly ever present wounds. Being Not in Cape Town is indeed an awful fate, and now I must wonder whether I have in fact shrivelled up without realising it? (I think not entirely. Maybe because I moved to Joburg first, which was still awesomely South African but without CT's cosmic rays, so a useful halfway house to the outside world. Be this good or not so good, who can say.)
And the inability to go back home... yes. I can imagine that being a Zimbabwean must add a layer of complication and sadness to the expat's usual problem. I've been aware for a long time that I can't go home again, for much the same reasons (I'm a nomad, always have been, and without much family anchor; always have been constructing my home and "family" of friends wherever I am); plus, everywhere you live has something going for it - otherwise you wouldn't be there - but nowhere has everything. So you develop a heightened awareness of compromise because the question of where you're living is never settled, you are constantly making that choice and assessing what you need, what you value, what you can (and have to) live without. Is hard.
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Also, your Reasons cut me, man, they really cut me. Or at least poke me painfully in not entirely open but certainly ever present wounds. Being Not in Cape Town is indeed an awful fate, and now I must wonder whether I have in fact shrivelled up without realising it? (I think not entirely. Maybe because I moved to Joburg first, which was still awesomely South African but without CT's cosmic rays, so a useful halfway house to the outside world. Be this good or not so good, who can say.)
And the inability to go back home... yes. I can imagine that being a Zimbabwean must add a layer of complication and sadness to the expat's usual problem. I've been aware for a long time that I can't go home again, for much the same reasons (I'm a nomad, always have been, and without much family anchor; always have been constructing my home and "family" of friends wherever I am); plus, everywhere you live has something going for it - otherwise you wouldn't be there - but nowhere has everything. So you develop a heightened awareness of compromise because the question of where you're living is never settled, you are constantly making that choice and assessing what you need, what you value, what you can (and have to) live without. Is hard.