Socializing
For our family, the saying goodbyes aren't as heavy as we had in our home country. Simply because we have no family here and our daughter made friends at the kindergarten but because of the distance to our home, these aren't close friendships. Thankfully, I know this will all change when we move, we will make sure she can follow swimming classes and interact with locals, without having to cross a big city jammed with traffic to get there (don't forget the waste of time getting there haha).
My boyfriend definitely made more friends than I did, for some reason I was very comfortable focusing on our own things and not having to socialize with people I don't know much. I always hated the "mandatory" birthday/holiday visits in Holland anyway, it made me feel like I was choking because I didn't have any say in the planning myself. So yeah, that may have caused me to become a bit allergic to these events, lol. Add to that living in a city where you're not really that happy and you have yourself a person that's completely fine without too many social interactions.
Lost connection
Besides some acquaintances, I did make one friend (actually two, if you count her boyfriend) that I enjoyed hanging out with. We went to a few cool events that truly made me love Budapest because of the great memories that will last forever. These were welcome nights out, to be honest, and long overdue. Unfortunately, at some point, she was spending more and more time abroad with her family adding to that my months of depressed feelings waiting for (and the processing after) the miscarriage that I was going through, which didn't make me very social. And when you haven't spoken for months, it also gets harder to break through this cycle. So I let it be.
I wasn't in a good place
As some may remember, I had a miscarriage last year after we already planned out everything, we decided to go private etc. We were happily expecting a baby. Then after some horror experiences with the Hungarian doctor here, I finally saw another one but that lady couldn't find a heartbeat anymore and I was expecting a miscarriage. The process was very slow and I think it took 6 weeks in total, I had a rough time not only physically but also emotionally. It was traumatizing to be honest, and I was far from feeling like socializing. This caused for me to not reach out to this friend and now we're already close to leaving this country so I felt like I should reach out to see if we can at least meet up one last time to reconnect. It felt like it as a now or never situation and I'm glad I did.
We both weren't sure what happened
Where I was wondering why I didn't get a response anymore from my last app to her, she was feeling I didn't want to socialize as I declined her invitation a few times when she wanted to meet up with her and some other friends. This was something that I didn't feel like at all but she could not haven known this as I never told her. Now that I explained that and also said that I wasn't sure what happened, we both understood the other side and were actually glad we reconnected. I get to meet her youngest for the first time, as I never met him unfortunately. It will be nice to hear what's going on in their life as well talking about our process of moving and what's ahead of us.
I had to mention Hive as well as Listnerds
I know at some point she signed up on Hive, but after a few posts, she stopped writing. Which is a shame because she has years of monetizable content as well as stories to tell. I know she could write for years to come and I also liked the way she wrote. Now that she's become a mother of two, I decided to tell her about the growth I made on Hive thanks to Listnerds coming to my path and I have to at least show her the possibility of earning a nice buck on the side while building a stake that will leave you with nice staking rewards later. I'm really hoping to be able to convince her before we leave as I feel that this will open a lot of opportunities for her and actually make her experience that it's not that difficult if you commit to it. Being a good writer and having great content to monetize is a big plus because it will give you something to share even on the days without inspiration.
I felt that I had to share this with her before there's a huge distance between us as now I'm still here and can also show her in person. Fingers crossed that this soon to be goodbye will also mean adding another great content creator to Hive as well as our Listnerds team. I think if we weren't leaving soon, I may have not gotten to the point of reaching out (yet).
Previous parts of The Expat Diaries
- We're closing the kindergarten chapter sooner than expected
- Finding a place to live in Spain
- The countdown is real - The last times in Budapest
- Our life in 6 suitcases - sorting, selling & giving away our belongings
- Moving back to Spain very soon!
Credits
- Header Image
- The text divider is my own design, where I sometimes use images from Canva Pro or in other cases, my own images.
Let's Connect
If you want to connect, you can give me a follow on my socials. For inquiries, you can send me a direct message on Discord.