If you’ve been following my stories, you might already know that 15 months ago, my husband and I immigrated to Canada from the Philippines, but that hasn’t quite turned out the way we thought it would.
My second story on Medium outlined the things I wish I knew about Canada before moving here.
I’ve also candidly curated a short list of unexpected things that have triggered and heightened our feelings of loneliness and homesickness as immigrants — from the most mundane (shampoo, for e.g.), to the most profound.
And one day, in a fit of rage, helplessness, and hopelessness, I even wrote and published an “open letter” to Canadian Immigration. This didn’t get too many views, so all it really did for me was give me a little bit of temporary “release”.
Then about a month ago, still with no seeming end in sight, I wrote about how I’ve begun questioning if waiting for our Permanent Residency was still worth all the anxiety and anguish, and if it was time to just accept that we made a mistake, cut our losses, and move forward to whatever’s next.
Clearly, this immigration experience has been one helluva massively extended and prolonged roller coaster ride.
These past few weeks, I’ve been remembering some of the things I thought, felt, and said back way back when we were knee-deep in preparations for our big move.
We’re so done with this country — the traffic, pollution, the crowd, the smells, the sounds, the corruption — all of it!
We can survive on less money and a smaller paycheck. Heck — once before, we were willing to consider coming to Canada as students, not workers.
Sure, sure — I know about Canada’s healthcare crisis, the housing crisis, and the horrible inflation. But still, I’m sure we’ll most likely be better there than we are here.
I even remember thinking that surely Canada is where we’re meant to be. At our age, the fact that we were granted work permits and were actually considered eligible for Permanent Residency means something!
We even made this one quintessential quote from Star Wars Rogue One our mantra —
If we can make it to the ground, we’ll take the next chance. And the next. On and on until we win… or the chances are spent.
And that’s what we did. We took the first chance, then the next, then the next, until we eventually got here.
I was deaf to all the subtle hints of concern meekly uttered by my mom of “But you’re already settled here. Are you really sure about this?”
I was just so determined to escape one life in the frenzied desire to find another, utterly and completely sure that we were making the right decision.
It was also my absolute confidence that “this is where we were meant to be” that kept us here for 15 long months.
Never mind that on our second day in St. John’s, we trekked uphill in freezing cold weather on roads covered in massive icy snow banks, shivering to the core and afraid for our lives, just to be able to get some groceries and medicines.
Never mind that a week later, we found ourselves stranded in the wide open highway of the city with freezing winds blowing at 60kph in the attempts of procuring more suitable winter clothes, and we genuinely wondered if we’d ever make it out of there alive.
I thought then, we’re newcomers, everything will get better once we get used to this new city we now call home.
Never mind that months later, as delays from immigration dragged on and on, my ability to provide for my family started hovering on the edge of impossibility. And the fact that I almost lost my job mere months since we arrived in Canada did nothing to even sway that certainty.
The PR will come any day now, and then our troubles will be over.
Never mind still that for every week that went by that we felt displaced, unsettled, and stuck in a perpetual limbo was another week of mounting depression, anxiety, and trauma– trauma that would keep repeating itself week after week, after week, after many more weeks.
It will come. The PR will come.
And never mind that back home, one brother had to be hospitalized due to extreme depression to the point of contemplating self-harm and suicide. Never mind too that by the end of the year, my mom had to deal with a terrible case of Covid-19. And never mind that my younger brother — left on his own to hold the family together — also seemed to already be on the brink of a mental breakdown.
It took nothing less than falling prey to a scam to finally break through my otherwise impenetrable stubbornness.
My husband always used to say that my dogged stubbornness would be my undoing. And he was right.
In hindsight, I don’t think it was as much about all the money I lost, as it was about the fact that I even let it happen at all. I’ve always prided myself for being discerning, level-headed, and street-smart. I survived, unhurt and unscathed, being held-up at knife-point once long ago by keeping my wits about me.
For me to succumb to what was obviously a scam from the get-go was a terrifying jolt of reality.
It wasn’t just money I had lost. I also lost my long-held unshakable belief in the soundness of my decision-making. I lost the absolute certainty I used to have about having made the best choices for my life, and my family’s lives.
It was the most humbling experience of my life.
As the cliche goes — things happen for a reason.
And now I’m beginning to think that I needed to live through that experience because it was the one thing that finally forced me to consider and reconsider if this path we are on is, indeed, the best path for us.
It took several more weeks before I finally uttered the words, “I think it’s time to go back home”.
And for the first time in a long, long time — I was awash with warmth, comfort and peace.
Over the Easter break, we started packing up our lives again, for the third time in 16 months. But this has been a much easier process this time around.
We knew home like the back of our hands.
We knew we’d be returning to the sweltering 40-degree summer heat of Manila, so we wouldn’t need any of our jackets, coats, boots, mittens, and thermal underwear.
Let’s just leave all this excess baggage behind.
We wouldn’t have to worry about bringing home enough toiletries, or items in our medicine cabinet, or even our “just in case” supplies like electric adaptors or household tools — we knew exactly where we could get them when we got back home.
Let’s travel light this time around. And this time, I’ll travel with an open mind.
I don’t know if this means the absolute end of our life in Canada. I don’t know if we’ll be back someday, or if we even will be allowed back someday.
I don’t know what awaits us back in Manila. I don’t know if we just wasted two years of our lives, only to return to the old life we wanted to leave behind. I don’t know if the old insecurities and anxieties about living in a third world country would be back to haunt us — I certainly mean to deal with them better this time around.
I do know that I don’t know… and can’t know anything for sure.
All I know is that on the same day we get back, we’ll be out and about seeking out old stomping grounds, and gorging ourselves on the absolutely unhealthy but sinfully delicious food we’ve been deprived of for so long — soul food, comfort food.
And all I know is that the comforts of home that have eluded us in these last 15 months now beckons like a shining beacon.
And I know that at the exact moment that I can, I’m making my way to where my mom and brothers are to give them the longest and tightest hugs to let them know that I’m here, and I’ve finally come back home.