Today is a big day – it marks 6 years since I moved to England! I got off a plane back in 2016 and arrived in the UK. And wow, what a journey it’s been since then.
I moved to be with my (now ex) husband, dealt with so many complex issues about living abroad and complicated visa renewals, had my life and heart shattered – and yet somehow, I’m still standing. I was granted Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK (ILR) last year in 2021. This year has been my first in the UK as a permanent resident!
Every year on this day I publish a blog post. In 2017, I wrote about 15 harsh truths about living in England (which has somehow become my most popular blog post of all time). In 2018, I wrote about what I’ve learned about British culture. In 2019, I wrote about the good, the bad, and the ugly. In 2020, I wrote about UK travel (a silver lining of the pandemic). Last year, in 2021, I wrote about why I love living in York.
So today, I thought I’d look back on how I felt at the beginning of this journey, and what I think now.
The psychological and emotional weight of immigration/visas has gotten so much better since I became a permanent resident. Racist microaggressions? For the most part, they wash off me now. When people say, “what are you doing here?” in a overly rude tone, I no longer absorb it and fixate on it. I’m here for good now, so for everyone who makes derogatory comments to me now, it’s like – well, you can’t get rid of me! The constant burden of feeling like an “other” is much less, now that I have ILR and am no longer personally reminded of the unfair and ridiculous immigration processes on a regular basis. I no longer pay the IHS surcharge as I no longer need to make visa applications – I pay for the NHS through my taxes, like everyone else.
I still get rude and xenophobic hate comments on this blog; I still have to deal with the microaggressions. They just don’t bother me the same way. Because I can stay for good, I have that stability and security, and no one can take that away from me.
I can’t put into words how good this feels. How much of a weight is lifted off my shoulders. How much better my mental health is. It’s indescribable. Getting ILR on 25 August 2021 was the best day of my life.
I hate the fact that I can’t vote, but besides that my life looks and feels fairly similar to that of a normal British citizen. And that is such a blessing.
I was so naïve and privileged to not expect the racism. Honestly, being white and being American makes me one of the most privileged immigrants in the UK. The fact that I never thought about whether I would experience Britain’s xenophobia firsthand – well it just shows how naïve I was. And how innate my privilege was, that I never considered how a country treats foreigners to be a factor when moving abroad. It’s kind of harsh to think back on it now, but wow – I am definitely shocked looking at my naivety and the rose-colored glasses I viewed the moving abroad experience through.
Actually, I was just naïve about a lot of things. I didn’t expect things to be as hard as they were. I didn’t expect to struggle to find a (good, well-paying) job the way I did. I didn’t expect to still feel pangs of homesickness years after moving. In many ways, after the struggle of getting the visa in 2016, I fell into that fantasy that everything would immediately be great when I moved. While many positives were apparent pretty immediately – I loved getting to live in the same country as my ex-husband and finally getting to be with him, for example – a lot of things take time. And I was very naïve seeing the adventure through those rose-colored glasses.
So many of my early struggles revolved around not having/earning enough money. When I look back at that first harsh truths post, I see that so much of it has to do with money. I don’t mind paying non-income-based council tax as much today, now that I make above minimum wage. I don’t have to deal with rude customers and their xenophobic comments as much, now that I no longer work in customer service and have a higher-paid job. While public transportation is still a shitshow, it doesn’t elicit as strong (negative) feelings from me as I now have enough money to afford train tickets when I need them.
They say money can’t buy happiness – but I believe that is an absolute fucking lie. Money, in particular earning a decent wage to support myself, has made my entire life better. It has made me so much happier, in every single way. I have had times in my life where I cried, every single day, for weeks, about money. Because I never had enough of it. And I was always trying to budget my money, so that I could do things that made me happy (like travel) while also having enough to survive. More money will make things better, it’s as simple as that. Money will improve your health (especially your mental health) so much.
As I write this, I’m back to money being especially tight for me. I had to take a 16% paycut in order to keep a job in my company’s restructure this spring – a job that requires more work, skills, and experience than my previous role. (Trust me, there’s no way you’re more pissed off about this than I am.) Throw into the mix global inflation and the UK’s extreme cost of living crisis, and times aren’t great for me right now, to be honest. That being said, I am doing my best to manage my budget to find small pockets of happiness for myself. But this is something I don’t associate with my life in England as an immigrant, because it would probably be the same for me in this economy wherever I lived.
So overall, earning more money to enjoy life more has brought a drastic improvement to my quality of life here. And it probably would anywhere in the world.
The diversity of accents here is still wild. The longer I live here, the more I learn just how localized regional accents are. People have different accents when they only live a 10-minute drive away. I don’t think Brits realize just how unique and interesting this is! In the US, sure I can tell a Midwest accent from a Southern accent – but I couldn’t tell you the exact town or city, within a 20-mile radius, of where that accent is from just from listening to someone speak. I am still constantly learning new things about accents here! And for the record, I’d like to say in general I can now understand 80% of what Scousers say. And if I listen hard enough, I tend to understand up to 50% of a conversation with a Geordie. What an improvement!
I am also still learning new words and new vocabulary here – whether that’s just normal British English phrases or regional sayings – even though I’ve been living here for 6 years. It is a never-ending education!
Driving: practice makes perfect. Driving has always been one of my biggest struggles since moving to the UK. I had horrific and intense anxiety about driving. So much of it was a mental block – taking driving lessons for 10 weeks before I passed my UK driving test definitely helped. But it really wasn’t until I bought my own car (that I paid for, that is solely my vehicle), that I overcame that mental block. I had two choices: either I get over it and figure out how to drive myself everywhere, or I’m not going to do anything, go anywhere, or see anything. I chose to get over it.
I am now a very skilled and safe driver here. I know how to drive single-track roads with confidence (even if I still hate them), I can reverse into passing places, I no longer panic. Driving on the Isle of Mull in Scotland, people pulled over to let me pass them, as I was going faster than they were. Can you believe it?! Once in 2017 I messed up a gear change at a roundabout, and had a full-blown panic attack and had to spend 10 minutes sobbing in the car park of a pub. Now I take myself on solo road trips all over the country without a second thought. It’s wild how much can change in just a few years.
The UK is an incredible country with so many wonderful destinations to explore. I thought I had seen quite a bit of the country during my year studying abroad in Nottingham. While I definitely did visit a lot of different places, it’s nothing compared to now. And oh, what an immense country this is to live in and explore!
I have explored what seems like every nook and cranny in Yorkshire – yet, again and again, I still find new places I haven’t been to yet. I’ve summited 55 Wainwrights in the Lake District, but there’s 214 to do in total. In the last 18 months, I have taken 7 individual trips to Scotland, each time exploring a new region. I haven’t been to Wales as often as I’d like, but I’ve got a bucket list for there about a mile long. I loved returning to Northern Ireland in 2019 (my first trip there since 2011, which was my first independent trip abroad and my first trip to the UK). With its fascinating history and magnificent scenery, it’s seemingly impossible to see everything in the UK.
I am beyond grateful for all the trips and adventures I have had around this country in the last 6 years. I have worked so hard to make each and every one happen. Brutal budgeting and extreme strategizing and planning pays off – I have traveled around the UK like nothing else. And I have absolutely loved it.
Of course, it helps that I live in the best city in the world. York is the greatest, and I am so grateful that I get to live here. It is beautiful, charming, historic, vibrant, safe, and cozy. It is home to me. It is where my heart is. It is simply the best.
What’s still on my UK bucket list? In Scotland, I am desperate to visit the Outer Hebrides and Shetland, as well as Islay and Jura. In England, I’d love to do a road trip around Cornwall (and Devon), as my only visit there was in winter without a car – so there’s a lot of outdoor stuff like hikes and beaches I want to see. The Malvern Hills and Shropshire has been on my bucket list for nearly a decade, so I need to go there. I would also love to visit the Isles of Scilly! When it comes to Wales, I have quite a few places in Snowdonia I’d like to visit – I’d also love to see more of Pembrokeshire, and maybe time it right to visit Skomer Island for puffins. For Northern Ireland, I’d love to hike around the Mourne Mountains! While it’s not technically part of the UK, visiting the Isle of Man has been a dream of mine for 11 years – so I’d love to make it happen.
What a wonderfully diverse and beautiful country this is. I’m so glad to call it home.
A lot of things just get easier with time as you get used to them, and you adapt. I used to be so annoyed that grocery stores/supermarkets close at 4pm on Sundays. While I still find this very inconvenient and annoying, I’ve just adapted to it. I make sure to never leave big grocery shops until Sunday night. I get any high street shopping done after work, before shops close in the evening. I have adapted to the way things are here – it’s as simple as that. You just get used to it and, slowly but surely, your previous routines/habits/preconceived notions fade away. This wasn’t something I did consciously – it just happened over time. You just adapt and change to the new environment.
I am continually astounded by the NHS. I say this in both a positive and negative way. The entire system seems on the brink of collapse due to over a decade of underfunding from the government. GPs across the country seem to be avoiding face-to-face appointments as a leftover side effect from the pandemic, and it is increasingly difficult to get an appointment within 2 weeks. (Being chronically understaffed and overworked probably has something to do with this.) The only solution to get a GP appointment it seems is to ring at 8am when your practice first opens, and ask for an emergency appointment. I simply don’t understand how the entire country has just accepted this as okay?
For all of its many faults, however, I have also witnessed the NHS work its sheer nationalized-healthcare magic. When my ex-husband nearly died in a car crash (breaking his leg and ankle, and apparently his hip as well?), he received excellent emergency care from the staff at Leeds General Infirmary. While many parts of this process were far from ideal, he had an ambulance ride, an overnight in the hospital, an untold number of x-rays/scans, plus surgery on his ankle. We received no medical bills. We paid nothing out of pocket for his medical care. That accident (which was unavoidable as it wasn’t his fault) would have bankrupted us in the US. Our lives, as we knew it, would have been over as we would likely have been in medical debt for decades to come. And seeing the NHS work the way it’s supposed to firsthand, and that whole experience in general, made me so unbelievably grateful for the NHS – in spite of all its faults. I know it isn’t perfect, but it is certainly better than the American system I lived in for most of my life. We should all work to protect the NHS at all costs.
The country has changed so much – for the worse – since I moved in 2016. It is a disaster. And it has been so, so sad to see the country I love so much decline into a cesspit of pseudo-fascism. And this has been met with a marked ambivalence from most of the country, if not (at times) outright cheers. The government continues to be a disgrace.
The most recent Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is simply the devil incarnate. I thought after Theresa May, who brought in the hostile environment in full force, that it couldn’t get worse. The Tories have continued to prove me wrong for the last 6 years – it only got much, much worse after her. Immigrants are people and everyone in this country, regardless of their nationality, deserves to be treated with compassion and respect.
The swing to the far right with Liz Truss as the new Prime Minister perfectly encapsulates this. Her economic plan tanked the pound (falling to its weakest level against the US dollar on record at one point), the country is looking at a looming recession and massive cost of living crisis, meanwhile the richest in the country are only getting richer. Downing Street and the Tory government partied while we stayed home during the covid pandemic and watched our family and friends die alone. It is, quite frankly, a disaster. This is simply unsustainable for a political party, they cannot keep going at this rate. I think the turning point will be soon. Enough people are finally disgusted with this government, and enough people are (unfortunately) suffering that I hope that real, impactful change will be around the corner.
Unfortunately, election rules in the UK mean we may have to wait until 2024 until the general public can actually vote for a new party. We will see how many people make it to then.
The hardest part of moving abroad is making new friends and building a support system – and I am so grateful for all my friends I have in York and around the country in general. There was a time in my life when I was made to feel like I had no one, like I had nothing without this one person. When that was gone, I was surprised to discover that I actually had a lot of friends, I actually had a lot of people who cared about me and who supported me, in this country. I’m so appreciative of the jobs I worked that brought me into contact with people who are now some of my best friends.
It is so hard and it takes time – but I have a lot of people who care about me here. And that really makes all the difference. It makes the hard days easier. It makes the tough times better. It makes those moments of loneliness and isolation feel less dramatic. I don’t think I have ever really taken those friendships for granted, but I appreciate them more than ever now.
This blog has been a constant throughout the whole experience. Away With Maja has been around for 6.5 years now. The vast majority of the blog is based on my experiences traveling the UK, traveling around Europe, and living abroad. I have continued blogging and I have kept going, even when there were times I felt it was much easier to just quit. I have used this blog (and writing) as an emotional outlet. I have used my social media platforms to share issues that I’m passionate about, along with the standard pretty travel pictures. This blog is still my baby and it will always be a part of me and my journey.
Overall, I am just so grateful. I’m so grateful to be here. I’m grateful that my life in the UK is permanent – that my future here is indefinite, that I have the freedom to choose my own destiny and shape my own future. I’m grateful for my friends here who supported me through my darkest moments, and my family and friends all over the world who have cheered me on throughout this journey. I appreciate it all so very much.
Whether you’ve been here for a week, a month, a year, or all 6 years of this journey, thank you from the bottom of my heart for following along! <3
You might like my other posts:
What I Wish I Knew Before I Moved Abroad
13 Tips For Surviving Life Abroad
15 Harsh Truths About Living in England
What I’ve Learned About British Culture After 2 Years Living in England
3 Years of Living in England: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Celebrating 4 Years in England: On the Silver Lining of UK Travel
5 Years Living in England: Why I Love Living in York
