Passport pages and growing pains
No one tells you that the scariest part of moving abroad isn’t packing your life into a suitcase, it’s the ache of arriving with a smile stitched onto your face while your heart quietly trembles inside your chest.
Life abroad doesn’t begin with fireworks or Instagram perfect moments. Oh, it begins with a lump in your throat at the airport, with tearful hugs you try to make last a lifetime, and with a strange silence that follows you into a room full of unfamiliar voices. Everyone says “you’re so lucky” but no one sees you trying to decode menus with trembling hands, or holding back tears because the street smells nothing like home.
You laugh when you don’t understand.
You nod when you’re lost.
You smile when you’re lonely.
It’s survival in its softest, saddest form pretending you’re fine while a hundred tiny things break inside you.
You miss things you didn’t even know you loved, the sound of your native language at the fruit market, the uneven pavement of your street, the random neighbor aunty’s unsolicited advice. You miss belonging without effort.
And the nights.. the nights hit harder.
Your phone becomes your closest friend, and your time zone becomes your biggest enemy.
Birthdays pass with video calls.
Festivals are a whisper, not a roar.
And food even when it’s delicious, tastes like a memory dressed up as something else.
But somewhere between mismatched shoes and mixed-up sentences, something inside you begins to awaken.
You celebrate your first small victory.. ordering coffee without pointing. You smile at a stranger, and they smile back not because you’re foreign, but because you’re human. You burn your first attempt at local cuisine, laugh it off, and try again.
Slowly, you stop surviving and start living.
You start to see that discomfort is a kind of rebirth. That unfamiliarity doesn’t mean failure, it means you’re learning. You realise that your accent carries stories, not shame. That your traditions don’t need validation to be sacred. That the version of you that once felt “too much” or “too different” is exactly the version you were meant to become.
Well, your passport begins to fill not just with stamps, but with silent stories etched between the pages. Every visa holds more than permission to enter, it holds the weight of goodbyes, the ache of unfamiliar beds, and the pride of figuring things out alone. These aren’t just travel documents they’re diaries of growing pains disguised as boarding passes. No one sees the invisible ink?! the tears cried over weak Wi-Fi, the joy of finding your hometown snack in a hidden aisle, the night you finally called this place “home” without choking on the word. You grow! awkwardly!
beautifully!
painfully.. into someone you never planned to be, but are quietly proud of becoming.
You don’t forget home.
You carry it with you in your spices, your prayers,m. You begin to understand that home isn’t a place; it’s a feeling.
And sometimes, you have to travel thousands of miles to find it within yourself.
You realise that you are no longer the person who arrived, scared, small, and stretched too thin. You’ve grown into someone resilient, open-hearted, and brave in ways that don’t fit into words.
And perhaps the most beautiful, painful, magical part?!
You become your own home.
You learn to belong not just to a city, not just to a culture, but to yourself.
So wait until you fall in love with a sunset on a street no one back home can pronounce.
Wait until your tears water something that blooms your confidence, clarity, courage.
Wait until you realise..
You were NOT lost.
You were simply becoming.
Living abroad doesn’t always feel brave but writing this has reminded me that it is.
So if you’re far from home, feeling like you’re unraveling, know that it’s okay. Growth often looks like falling apart first.
And maybe one day, when you least expect it, you’ll find yourself laughing with strangers, cooking your mother’s recipes from memory, and writing your own version of belonging.
With all my heart,
-A girl living abroad, still becoming
Anam Hayat
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