5 Lessons I Learned After Moving Across The World For Love
Originally posted November 29, 2021 on caitlindugan.com
Just after 1:00 pm on December 1st, 2017, I landed in Western Australia after twenty-six hours of airports and flying. (It's usually a minimum of thirty-six from where I lived, but I broke it up with a few days in LA.) Typically, after the long journey to Perth, I'd be shattered. This time was different. I was energized and keyed up. I had just moved across the world to be with the guy I'd been "not dating long-distance" for six years. Awaiting my arrival at the bottom of the escalator was my dear friend Sal, her darling son Zach, and my now ex. We had a cheeky tailgate celebration in the car park- a glass of bubbles for the adults and a juice box for ZBear. After our quick tipples, the ex whisked me off for a surprise celebratory getaway in Jurian Bay, a three-hour drive north of Perth.
Not only did he pack a bag full of my favourite nibbles for the drive, but we pulled up to the holiday house just in time for a magical sunset. We jumped out of the car, grabbed the eskie, hopped in an antique dune buggy to arrive on the beach moments before the sun kissed the horizon. I remember thinking, "Holy shit, fairy tale moments really do exist. This must be a good omen for our journey ahead." Now, I wasn't naive to the fact we had our work cut out for us. We were moving from a phone relationship to living with each other overnight. I knew there would be growing pains, but I was excited to embrace them and learn together.
Even though the relationship didn't officially end until fifteen months later, it was just seven days after that fairy tale arrival that I considered running for the hills. An important boundary was crossed, and my inner wisdom knew right then and there that things were doomed. First, there was an overwhelming sinking feeling. Then with absolute certainty and dread, my inner wisdom said, "Oh fuck, this is never going to work. What did I just get myself into? I can't leave after a week."
So, as the title suggests, here I present the crucial insights gained during the four years that have unfolded since:
Lesson 1: Listen to your inner wisdom and the energetic sensations in your body.
The complete truth is that the intuitive moment after arriving wasn't the first. My intuition had been communicating to me for YEARS that things weren't right. Rather than investigate the subtle pings that something was off, I justified behavior, amplified the happy times, or just plain ignored the nudges. The energetic prods picked up frequency after I chose to settle in. When they got fed up with being ignored, I started to have unexplained bloating and digestive issues. Something I've NEVER had in my life before. My stomach got so bloated that I took a pregnancy test every two weeks for two months even though I was on an IUD and never missed a period. I went to the GP, had blood work done, did bacterial tests, and took meds. Nothing made a dent in it. Shortly after the tummy troubles began, anxiety attacks joined the party. Also, something I've never had before. Miraculously, the bloating and digestive issues went away after I moved out and started working through the emotional baggage. The anxiety carried on for a while, but I'll share more about that in lesson three.
Lesson 2: People really are mirrors of what we already contain within us.
As it often happens in the post-breakup healing process, I had to sift through a fuckton of resentment. I felt resentment for being lied to, broken promises, getting gaslit for addressing issues, and being criticized for what felt like everything. In reality, it probably wasn't everything, but I do believe it was still a lot. The resentment itself I've mostly worked through and let go of. Full disclosure: It still pops up occasionally. However, a couple weeks ago, I had a profound "Ah-Ha!" moment regarding those frustrations, which has really helped. The broken promises? The lying? The gaslighting? The criticism? Those were all things I'd been doing to myself for YEARS, in and out of the relationship. My ego would love to play the victim about the unjust times, but I was equally guilty of the same bad behavior.
Lesson 3: You can't create a life of peace and joy from a mind of turmoil and garbage.
This little ditty came to me in the middle of an anxiety attack. By the end of 2019, nine months after the breakup, the stressors of my life were starting to break me. Not only was I healing from emotional abuse (though I hadn't figured out that's what it was yet), I didn't know if my dad would survive his cancer battle (He did, woohoo!). I also moved to a new home across the city every week, attended school twenty-five hours a week, and worked twenty-plus hours a week. Whatever spare time I had left was packed with homework, walking dogs, cleaning the houses before moving out, and cooking all my food from scratch to save money. Oh, and I didn't have a vehicle. All this constant shifting with my life in suitcases happened on foot or using multiple trains and busses (and lifts from my guardian angel work fam). Sometimes life likes to kick you while you're down, so toss in a major falling out with my only close friend and emotional support in Perth.
This was also before I had identified how critical my self-talk was. So, for total accuracy, imagine an invisible asshole following me around constantly shouting, "You're not doing enough!", "Something's wrong with you!" and "You should be healed and happy already!"
The brilliant piece of advice came to me while I laid in corpse pose on my yoga mat, paralyzed by anxiety for who knows how long. My inner wisdom somehow broke through the sludge with that exact sentence in the heading. Actually, the complete thought was, "You can't create a life of peace and joy from a mind of turmoil and garbage. You've done a great job dealing with all this on your own, and it's time to ask for help." I initially pushed back by citing how much money it would steal from my barely there savings account. Inner wisdom pushed right back with, "What good is that extra money going to do you if you're paralyzed with mental health issues?" Touche, inner wisdom, touche.
By the next day, I had found and booked in with a psychologist for later that week. She listened with patience and care as I laid out everything on my plate. I wish I would've documented her exact words, but when I finished, her response was somewhere in the family of, "Yeah, it's a good thing you came in when you did."
Lesson 4: Finding empathy for someone's hurtful behavior is only healthy if you hold equal space for your own experience.
I have a fairly strong ability to see sticky situations from the other person's perspective or attempt to, at least. What became clear to me in my healing journey was that I don't always afford myself the same compassion. When I want the other person to feel heard, respected, and loved, I often take on their perspective as the whole truth or the more important account. When I do this, I automatically minimize my perspective or disregard it altogether. (For me, this also ties into being scared of feeling and expressing anger, but that's a whole other beast for a different post.) And it wasn't just in the relationship I did this, I saw the pattern running through friendship struggles, as well.
In my experience, minimizing what I felt to make another feel better ultimately led to loads of resentment. To be clear, I'm not saying it's better to be a compassionless prick. I want to deepen my ability to understand the other perspective while simultaneously supporting my truth with the same compassion I offer so much easier to others. In a perfect world, our loved ones will always attempt to honor our side of the story. Sadly, depending on what old wounds have been brought to the surface, this is often not the case. No one can have our back and support us in the way we deserve but ourselves. It's our responsibility, and when we put our validity in someone else's hands, we give away our power.
Lesson 5: Generational baggage is powerful, and no one is immune to it.
A large part of my parents' divorce revolved around disputes regarding alcohol consumption. You can imagine my perfectionism's horror when I saw the exact same struggles unfolding in my relationship. I thought I was much too clever to succumb to that history. It didn't take long before I also saw similar storylines in my ex's family. Slowly, the penny began to drop. While chatting with my Grandma about those struggles, she opened up about the early days of her marriage. Specifically, the time she kicked my Grandpa out of the house for continually spending too much time at the bar. That's when it all clicked. This was not something to outsmart. This was a deeply ingrained dysfunctional pattern handed down from generation to generation.
This lightbulb moment sparked new looks at old memories. As a little girl, I thought it was completely normal to find empty bottles of chardonnay hidden in cupboards around your grandmother's bathroom. (Different grandmother, which illustrates how both families passed the baton in their own special way.)
We are all the descendants of people who have lived through mind-blowing hardships with little to no tools to process the trauma they experienced. Let's just start with the big four- war, genocide, colonization, and slavery. You and/or someone you know has at least one, if not several, of those traumas in your bloodline. Whatever unprocessed fear, pain, or anxiety lived within in your parents, or parents' parents' parents, for that matter, was part of the DNA soup growing you and your ancestors in the womb. That doesn't even touch on the day-to-day experiences we absorb while little sponges in the real world. Until we all stop to question our individual and family patterns, we will all continue to perpetuate the pain still unfolding around the world to this day.
For the longest time when I would think of that "I can't leave after a week" moment, I always thought I wasn't brave enough to bail right then and there. That staying was weak, and I brought the pain on myself. That I talked my intuition out of her feelings. That everyone would think I was nuts for moving across the world for love and leaving after seven days. Well, that thought did cross my mind, but it wasn't why I chose to stay. In really sitting with that memory to type it out just right, I realized it was also my inner wisdom that said, "I can't leave after a week." It wasn't shame or weakness that made me push on. The same inner wisdom that knew the relationship was doomed also knew I needed to stay. I had to give it more before giving up. And I didn't know that was true until writing this post to share with you. Now there's the gift of writing live in action! It also takes the wind right out of the inner critic's sail, double winning!
Sure, leaving would have saved me a lot of pain, but I've gained so much more than I suffered. I am not the same person I was before, and that's a priceless gift. I wasn't a terrible person, but I definitely wasn't being my best self. I was forced to take a more honest look at my own demons and pain offloading mechanisms. Does this mean I deserve the less-than-loving moments I experienced? Nopety, nope, nope! Do I need to take responsibility for my role in creating the environment that they grew from? Absofuckinglutely! Well, only if I want to progress to the next level of human school and not give away my power to change.
As always, thank you for reading and supporting this passion of mine. As this is one of the most personal and vulnerable things I've written to date, I'd like to indulge with a special request. Please forward this to someone you think it might resonate with, or perhaps your editor friend at Conde Nast? I would love nothing more than my hard-earned learnings to bolster others in their journey.
Love always,
Cat