I Don't Want To Go

I can’t stop crying.  I’m just so sad.  Our time here is up.  

I’ve never felt this before.  Like a child without agency.  Just being told it is time to go.  Having no control.  

Moving here I was just so excited.  All smiles and positive energy.  Now I can’t stop crying.

When I found out I was sitting on the floor in the hallway of our Tokyo apartment, outside our guest room turned office.  I was listening to Steve on a work call and realized this was it.  It was happening.  We were coming up on the end of our 5-year Visa in Japan and our time was up.  Tik, tik, boom.  

And just like that, the house of cards fell down.  We were going to be relocated back to Minnesota with 3M this winter.  Repatriation.

I told Steve I didn’t want to tell anyone because I didn’t want my life here to change.  It was kinda like after you tell your friends you are pregnant and then all they ever want to talk to you about is babies.  I hated that.

I decided to keep it in.  My first secret I have ever kept to myself.  But I’m not good at that.  I can’t hang out with you and not tell you everything that is churning inside.

So, I told my first friend on the floor of my bedroom.  I just kept crying.  She cried too.  It felt like a High School breakup.  Taylor Swift should’ve been playing in the background, but Midnights wasn’t out quite yet.   

From there, I shared the news with my family.  They were excited.  I get that.  But I wasn’t. 

Then I told more Tokyo friends, the ones that will be leaving Japan too.  I thought it would feel good to have others that share the same sentiments as me.  And it did.  But all our situations are so different.  Some are choosing to leave, ready to go home.  Some are getting ripped away too, but face different circumstances depending on where they land.

And as I told my Minnesota crew of course I had to pretend to be elated.   But the truth is, I don’t want to go.

It’s not that I know I won’t be fine in Minnesota.  I know I will.  I know that I have amazing friends there.  That I will make amazing new friends.  That it will be so much easier to navigate EVERYTHING and to have access to Whole Foods salad bar again.  I can sign-up the boys for every single after-school activity and they will make friends in a snap.  I get to buy a new house, a new car, new furniture - redesign my life from scratch.  And work - I get to dive back in.  But in a way that builds on everything I have learned in the past five years.  Not just go back. Go forward. It’s exciting.  It is.  

But, I don’t want to go.  Everyone tells me that we can come back to visit.  But it’s not that.   It’s not Japan. It’s the people in Japan.  The people WE are here.  The community we’ve built.  The time it took to build it.  The moment in time that we were here, during COVID, where we didn’t have parents visiting and trips to take and we were just all locked in together.  The friendships here are deep and real and to just leave them sucks.  Of course, there is FaceTime.  Of course, I now have life long friends in Italy and Hong Kong and Melbourne and Japan and scattered across the US - but it is not everyday that I get to be with them.  Just like this.  Getting coffee.  Going to art exhibits.  Hopping on a Shinkansen for the day. 

And Krispy Kreme - the gift that has been.  I’ve never resigned from a job not wanting to go.  It doesn’t feel good.  I wanted to drown myself in a dozen Original Glazed®. 

So yes, we are headed home this Xmas.  We have tickets for our flights out on December 17, 2022.  The day after my birthday.  Stopping in Hawaii first, to dog sit for a dog that passed away yesterday.  It’s poetic and ironic.  The sadness of it all.

I know I will be fine.  

I know I will.  

I just don’t want to go.