The Myth of Return: When “Someday We’ll Go Home” Becomes Years Abroad
When you first move to another country, it is easy to think of your life there as temporary.
We will stay for a few years. We will work, study, build our lives for a while and someday we will go home.
I think many people who live abroad carry some version of this thought. Even after years have passed, there can still be a quiet feeling that this is not completely permanent. Home is somewhere else, and one day we will return to it.
But “someday” is a strange word. It can last much longer than we expect.
When a Temporary Life Becomes Your Real Life
Years pass almost without you noticing. You work. You raise children. They start school. You make friends. You learn how everything works in the country where you live. You build routines, responsibilities and memories.
Gradually, the place that was supposed to be temporary becomes the place where most of your everyday life happens.
And still, somewhere in your mind, you may continue thinking:
Someday we will go home.
That thought can influence many decisions. You worry about whether your children are learning your language because they may need it when you return. You think about education in both countries. You wonder whether you should buy a home here or wait. You compare the life you are building with the life you imagine you might have back home.
You live in one country while keeping part of yourself prepared for another.
But Life at Home Does Not Wait
For a long time, I imagined home as something that would remain there for me. Of course, I knew people were getting older and life was changing, but emotionally, it was easy to believe there would always be another visit.
Another summer. Another conversation. Another opportunity to sit together.
During the years I have lived abroad, I lost my mother, my grandmother, my mother’s sister and other relatives. I could not always be there when it mattered most.
There were moments I could not return for, conversations that could no longer happen later and time together that I had unconsciously assumed would still be waiting for me.
Living far from home taught me something I had not fully understood when I left:
Distance is measured in more than kilometres. Sometimes it is measured in the moments we miss.
We often talk about the practical difficulties of living abroad: language, work, visas, education, culture and loneliness. But perhaps one of the hardest things is watching the lives of the people you love continue from a distance.
Parents grow older. Children grow up. Families change. And sometimes the people we thought we would see again when we returned are no longer there.
For years, I thought returning home was something I could decide later. But some parts of home do not wait for us.
The Home We Imagine Is Changing Too
We often imagine returning to the home we remember. But while we are changing abroad, our home country is changing too.
The streets change. People move. Families and relationships change. Parents age. Children who were little when we left become adults.
And we change as well.
After living in another country for many years, you develop different habits and expectations. Things that once felt completely natural may begin to feel unfamiliar.
Sometimes you return to the place you have been calling “home” for years and discover that you are both at home and slightly outside it.
Perhaps returning is not really going back. The exact place, people and version of ourselves that we left behind no longer exist in quite the same way.
What Does “Home” Mean to Our Children?
Having children makes this question even more complicated.
The country I think of as home is part of my children’s identity, but their experience is different from mine. They are growing up in Korea. Their school is here. Their friends are here. Korean has become their strongest language. Many of the memories that will define their childhood are being created here.
So when I think, “Someday we may return home,” I have to ask myself:
Whose home?
For me, returning may mean going back to the country where I grew up. For my children, it could mean leaving the country where they grew up.
That is a difficult difference to accept.
It does not mean that they cannot love Uzbekistan or feel connected to our family and culture. I hope they always do. But I cannot expect their relationship with my home country to be identical to mine.
Maybe the Myth Is Not the Return Itself
I still do not know what the future will bring. Perhaps we will return one day. Perhaps our lives will continue between two countries in ways I cannot predict today.
So I do not think the “myth of return” means that returning never happens.
Maybe the myth is believing that we can postpone life until that return.
It is believing that the home we left will remain unchanged, that the people we love will always be waiting and that one day we can simply go back and continue where we stopped.
We cannot.
Time has been passing there too.
There is value in remembering where we came from. There is value in keeping our language, relationships, traditions and connection to home alive. But perhaps we also have to be careful not to live our present life as though it is only temporary.
Because while we are waiting for “someday,” this is also our life.
Our children are growing up now. The people we love are growing older now. The conversations we want to have need to happen now.
Maybe home is no longer only the place we hope to return to someday. Maybe home is also something we have been building, quietly, all these years.
This is a personal reflection on living abroad, loss, family and the changing meaning of home.
