I didn’t anticipate writing about reaching four years in Australia milestone. I may have even said in last years post, Three Years in Aus, that I wouldn’t be writing this year. But here we are.

After all the positive and gushing posts I’ve written about Australia and our immigration here, our life in Sydney and the transition I think I couldn’t go past this year without writing.

This last year was hard. Very hard. Easily our most difficult year here.

To just show you the positives and talk to the positives isn’t fair. You need to know that there are hard times too. Even when it seems to be smooth sailing.

And while I will always, always focus on the positives and I’ll always share the good because I’m grateful that we’re here. Our kids are safe and very very happy. I continue to see the cup as half full and the obstacles as part of the adventure, I do need to put down in writing and admit it to myself and to you, that this last year was hard!

So here it goes…

Four years in Australia

When we moved over in 2015 people would always say that there is a 6 month lull. That when you get to 6 months the reality sinks in and the adventure becomes real life. It’s no longer exciting and new, it’s mundane and familiar but harder than it was in your home country. But that didn’t happen to us. Granted we had a lot going on in that first year, I’m lucky to have made it out alive. Literally. But this post isn’t about that.

But similarly to the medical issues I had in that first year, I found it so difficult to write about that. Every time I thought about what happened I would get angry. I would sit down to write and not be able to get it all done before I got mad and upset and shaken. (That post has no bearing on this post but you can read about it here). But I knew I had to get it off my chest. Every time I thought about writing this post I would get the same feelings. I was short with my kids, I shouted at my husband. I was just mad at how tough it had been for us over the last year.

But everything was almost perfect at the 3 year mark!?

I remember where I was sitting when I wrote the post Three Years in Australia, just setting out on my studies to convert my law degree so I could start practicing in Australia (spoiler: I’m still not there yet). My son was in a beautiful school, he still is and it has been one of the positives of the last year, to see him just flourish. We had found a new day care for my daughter and she was forming the most special friendships with three beautiful girls just like her. My husband had been offered a new job and the salary increase made our lives easier. It was a good space. We were all really happy and looking forward to a fantastic year to come.

And then things started to fall apart.

What happened during our Fourth Year?

Nothing but everything.

Unlike any serious accident or incident, I can’t pinpoint the moment it started unraveling. The unraveling was so slight but then it gained momentum and we got to a very low point.

Nothing happened that wouldn’t have happened in South Africa. It was a combination of me studying and my husband’s new job and the combination of those two things without any family support was just exhausting.

It was just months of my husband being at work all the time. Me studying in every spare second and attending night lectures on the other side of Sydney. And it was like we were living in silos, just occasionally passing each other. We would see each other in the five minutes I picked him up from the bus and took him home with the kids before I raced to my lectures.

And battling through these things in winter just makes it worse. Everything just seems to be a little more depressing in winter. For us winter 2018 was the winteriest winter of our lives to date.

Studying again

I don’t know if it’s because I’m older, because I studied so long ago initially and methods of teaching have changed or whether teaching is different in Australia to South Africa but it was not the same. Yes, being older is useful in that you are better prepared, less foolhardy and you’ve got a practical understand but there are more issues than advantages. Add kids to the mix, and having to do all your own housekeeping, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping and it’s so difficult. Being committed to lectures when soccer practice and matches are on, writing assignments while kids are on school holiday. It’s so so hard to balance it all.

You know that point when you’re so busy trying to accomplish something that will benefit your family but at the same time it’s taking up every spare inch of your brain, your patience and you attention. It feels like there is nothing left to give but you have a life and a family that needs you as much and there is just no one who can step into the gap. No family to just drop the kids at or to do a school run. No one who you can just go to for dinner and sit and eat in silence because you have nothing left to make conversation.

The relationships you’ve made are carefully crafted, are relatively new and need curating. You can’t rock up at a friends house and say, I know I look disgusting, I can’t make conversation and am probably going to get mad at my kids over something silly and we’ll all go home in a bad mood. That’s just not fair on the people who are at the same stage in their lives, also trying to juggle all sorts of things. You also can’t act around friends the way you can with family. Well at least not friends you’ve known for a shorter period than your kids have been alive.

One of my worst moments were being at hospital with my daughter when I had an assignment due. And while that in itself isn’t the worse thing, not completing and submitting an assignment affects a whole course and ability to sit an exam which in turn means having to redo the subject. The thought of paying the exorbitant fee again and putting in all the hours of attending week night and weekend lectures again at the cost of looking after the kids or supporting your partner is just depressing.

And the whole time these thoughts are sitting in the back of my mind instead of being fully focused on the poor sick child sitting next to me.

So nothing monumental happened. I just was perpetually worn out and trying to be the hands on mother I expect myself to be. And a good wife. And a relatively good friend.

Working in a bad environment

For my husband, work was not an easy place to be. The culture within his division of a massive Australian company was bad. Very bad.

Now I’m loyal and probably a workaholic but some of the things that were asked of people were shameful. Family time featured below work availability, regardless of the time of day or the week and you were encouraged to dob in your colleagues on any minor issue and castigate junior members of staff. When my husband finally left, the members of his team cried because they had finally be led by someone with a sound moral compass. I would never ever suggest that company as an employment option to anyone I know.

After his leave was cancelled for two family trips, he missed our son’s birthday, and he was going to have to work over Christmas (he’s not saving lives for goodness sake, it’s only finance) we realized it was not the right place for him to be.

He was spending so much time feeding into that big bank that it was taking up all of him. It was all consuming. And at what cost? I wouldn’t see him much and when I did, it was the worn out shadow of the person I had married.

Months and months of working in an environment like that when your partner is never around or available and unable to support you or to be a listening ear is destructive. Especially when you’re in a new country, you’ve started from a new place, you’ve put so much pressure on yourself to perform, to be fantastic, to build an Australian resume and justify the price they’ve paid for you. Not to mention feeling as though you can’t leave because you are the breadwinner. You can’t leave. You’re miserable but you’re stuck!

It’s a bad place to be in.

And then I said it

I could see how unhappy my husband was and I was also just exhausted trying to prove myself and get a degree I already had to practice law in a city where I may not find a job.

Standing in the kitchen, I uttered the words I thought I would never say…

I actually said: “would it be easier if we just went home”.

That was the only time I have ever asked my husband if we should just go home.

I can’t believe I let those words pass my lips but there it is. It had been said. I couldn’t take it back. I thought it a few times over a bleak few weeks when it just felt all too much and then I said it to him.

As soon as it was out my mouth I knew that it was just emotion talking but it was like I had to expel it, just so that my brain could hear it and tell my emotions that they were being ridiculous.

But if you’ve had a hard time, you get it. You understand. Doesn’t matter if that point comes at four weeks in Australia or Four years in Australia. To go back to what you know. To know that you’re working hard but it’s worth it and that there will be afternoons or mornings or even evenings when granny and grandad can look after the kids. You know that if there is a crises you’ve got someone to call.

What happened after that?

Voicing that, and accepting that we were miserable was liberating. We talked and tried to establish what we need to get through this. We knew we wouldn’t take our kids out of the good spaces they were in and we knew that our situations would be temporary even if they felt deathly at the moment.

Then we discussed what each of us needed to do at a bare minimum to get through to the end of the year when my studies would be done and I could take take back our happiness.

My husband stayed in the job for a while but then left. He didn’t move to another job, he just left. It was so scary and daunting and we just had to have utter faith that he would get a new job. We cut our costs to the minimum, prayed a lot and he met with every recruiter he knew. Just before Christmas, like a miracle, he got a contract position at a wonderful wonderful company. But again this meant starting from the beginning, a new reputation to build, long hours and more hope that it would be worthwhile. 7 months on and he’s still there and we take it a week at a time, day at a time. Who knows what will happen next month or the month after. We just have to have faith.

Thankfully, I got my results and had passed so I didn’t have to redo any subjects. I could just focus on the family again, for a while. But nothing is easy for long and I had to do my practical legal training in property, something I’m probably not going to ever use in practice but have to know anyway. More studying meant more family sacrifice but this time it somehow felt easier. I felt like we’re a team again, my husband and I and we can do this, by God’s grace.

If we got through that last winter, we can get through this one too. Thankfully, I passed that too and met some really great people through both sets of my studies.

Does a bad 6 or 8 months dictate the experience of a whole year?

No matter how hard our year was I know that we are all extremely grateful to be here and have been allowed to become residents.

When you’re in a bad space it definitely takes a while to recover from it. The difficulty isn’t just confined to the hardship. So while the whole year wasn’t awful and we had some good moments and the odd trip to bring us back together as a family, the year did have a sense of being a hard year in general.

Don’t get me wrong, the whole year wasn’t doom and gloom. We had a beautiful trip to Hamilton Island at the end of the year, fantastic experiences around Sydney, great birthday parties. Lots of special happy memories. We have had a good four years in Australia, definitely.

In the same way an injury affects an athlete’s future confidence, having a hard chapter in the immigration process definitely makes you a little nervous about the future.

I don’t think that I’m as happy go lucky as I was a year ago but I’ve definitely got a real perspective and I’m still filled with hope.

How to get through four years in Australia and then even more years

I feel that when you’re an expat you always have a sense of reaching milestones, the first year, the second, maybe the third. Then when you’re entitled to apply for citizenship and again when you’ve been in your new country for 10 years.

Each time you reach that milestone there comes a point of reflection. A point at which you briefly look back. Whether it’s for ten seconds or hours or maybe brief chats with your family over a few days. And rightly so, it’s a huge accomplishment to uplift your entire life and move to a completely unknown place filled with variables and uncertainty. And then once you’ve taken that leap of faith, sticking to it, through thick and thin.

There is definitely something to celebrate. Definitely equivalent to a milestone.

And in writing this post, that’s what I’ve realized the answer is to the difficulty of immigrating. It’s an exercise in mental strength and in order to get through it you have to

1. Acknowledge the milestones.
2. Celebrate the good, every little bit of good, every bit of happy, every bit of achievement.
3. When it’s been bad, stop, take cognisance of it and then let it go and move on.

Preserving our mental strength and stamina is the only way to get through this long marathon that is immigration.