Hitting the Smallness Wall

Well folks, it finally happened. I hit the smallness wall. Last week while shopping for a cardigan, I found myself absolutely crushed by the feeling that New Zealand is a tiny country stuck in the bottom of the world. I had heard people talk about this, primarily Kiwis who left for an overseas experience and never returned because Europe, the UK, or the US felt so much bigger and had more opportunity (a million Kiwis lived overseas at the start of the pandemic!) and by people about to leave on a big international trip to get out of tiny New Zealand and have more choice. I smiled, nodded, and tried to understand, but I now have a new appreciation for that claustrophobic feeling that its me and five million other people stuck on a few islands together. Even worse, these islands are devoid of beige, chunky knit, v-neck, not cropped cardigans with puffy sleeves. Yes, I realize the inability to find the sweater I wanted was a pretty shallow experience, but it can be extremely frustrating to find anything out of the ordinary here. There are the same stores over and over again that carry nearly the exact same thing. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

After a long walk and a good think about why I was feeling this way, I finally realized that for the time being, I have around an 18 month window of loving New Zealand and all it has to offer before I want to go back to the States and spend some time in a familiar setting. Our initial move was in June of 2018 with our first family trip back in December of 2019. I remember being so excited about coming back, seeing friends, and hanging out all my old stopping grounds. I was carefully planning out all of my Amazon purchases and thrilled that everything I planned on ordering online I could check out and return if it didn’t work for me. I couldn’t wait to eat my favorite tacos and to drive on the “right” side of the road.

We got back to New Zealand in January of 2020, right before the world tumbled into chaos. And now, 17 months after our return and with no trip back any time soon, I feel unpleasantly stuck. But I have to remind myself that if I do venture out of New Zealand, it won’t be back to the world I left in January of 2020. Things have changed, and I don’t think I can truly appreciate how much of collective shift has happened in the US because we’ve been living a totally normal life here in New Zealand. So the real question is: do I feel stuck here, or am I in mourning for a pre-covid life when travel was time consuming but easy?

For the fellow expats out there, what have you done to get over that feeling of stuck-ness and claustrophobia?