Another One Bites the Dust
Everybody’s leaving and I’m tired of loving and losing new friends.
When we moved to Turkey in 2106, we were lucky enough to move around the same time as several other friends from the U.K.
We were also determined not to live in an ex-pat bubble, so as a young family (with two small boys aged 2 and 3 months), we set out to make local friends.
We threw ourselves into language and culture learning. Determined to master Turkish, my husband went to a course while I had a one-to-one tutor, who I’d do lessons with in a cafe (sometimes with a baby attached to my boob).
Slowly, I found my tribe, a group of Turkish mums that had made while pregnant at prenatal yoga. A group of about 6 families, they welcomed us in.
These mums friends were a lifeline for me, as I was not only experiencing the loneliness that can come from being a stay-at-home mama with tinies, but there was another layer of loneliness from being a foreigner.
I also had a handful of ex-pat friends, mostly from the U.K. We built community with these friends, inviting each other over for English comfort food when homesickness kicked in, or doing game nights on Fridays, sitting on our balcony in the balmy heat, cracking open salty sunflower seeds with our teeth until our lips hurt, sipping Efes beer.
Both those ex-pat friends and Turkish friends were like GOLD- very precious, took a long time to find, and I didn’t want to lose them.
Over the years some of our English friends started to return home. Mental health struggles, different family needs, being unable to find a job. It was hard to say goodbye.
More English families arrived. We welcomed them, got to know them. Then they left. Some in traumatic circumstances, others just because ‘it was time’.
American families came, joined our circle. Again we opened our homes and hearts, our kids made friends. Their visas got denied. They left.
Some of our Turkish friends decided to live out of the city as our kids got older. Some emigrated abroad, some down to Bodrum to leave by the stunning blue Aegean Sea.
Just three Turkish families remained from our original group of six.
After the pandemic I made some new American girlfriends through work. I went deep with these two precious women, who remain some of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met. One left last year.
Then 2024 seemed like the final shake-up that dislodged and removed, what feels like my final ‘precious-gold’ friends.
Political and economical struggles in Turkey means my Turkish friends want out.
It seems like the the giant earthquakes of February 2023 were like the camels that broke the camels back.
My closest Turkish friend, who is like sister to me, (we volunteered in the earthquake zone together , which bonded us for life) announced her and her family were moving to Boston. (You can read about the earthquakes below).
My kids make best friends every year at school, and every year they leave.
Every time I hear from a family that they are moving on, my heart breaks for my boys. Now my oldest boys are 8 and 10, their babyish ability to just ‘roll with it’ is slowly being replaced with an awareness of how impermanent our community is.
I’m terrified that they will be damaged from everyone leaving all the time, and that one day, they’ll stop giving their hearts to new friends as they settle into their class groups each September.
I know I for one, as an adult, am beginning to struggle to love new friends, when they come around.
What’s the point if they leave anyway? At the end of the day, I don’t have capacity for more WhatsApp friends scattered around the world.
In the space of one week this summer, I just learnt of four key families in our lives that are leaving. To be brutally honest, as soon as I get a text saying ‘Come round for dinner’ I know what’s coming.
Out of the latest exodus, one family has been here for 20 years, and were ready for a new chapter. Another are sick of Turkey and are leaving for a new job in Australia. The other will move back the U.K. in time to start their child’s schooling.
I don’t blame people for leaving. There are so many good reasons to do so.
I just have to figure out how to thrive in such a transient community for now. But how sustainable is this?!
I’m stuck between no energy to find or welcome in new friends, and no energy to keep up with all the ones who left via Zoom. So where does that leave me?
With a weary, broken heart. Not a broken heart that was shattered by loss or betrayal, but a heart that is covered in lumps of scar tissue that has grown to cover the tiny wounds incurred each time a friend left. The scar tissue doesn’t hurt most of the time. It’s numb. Dormant. Functional. But when pressed, I clench my teeth as a dull pain shoots flickers across my heart.
If you leave abroad, and you relate to anything I’ve shared, let me know, how do I find the strength to keep loving, to keep my heart soft, but also to guard it? Have you got any tips?
Because surely it’s better to have loved and lost that never to have loved at all.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. (CS Lewis).
