Ten Suitcases Later
Moving back home to India after nearly 3 years in the US is nothing short of a rollercoaster. It’s a great reminder of how easy it is to pack your things up, pack your home, your life up, and move across the globe yet again.
It isn’t.
The logistics alone are a nightmare. You need multiple Excel sheets, timelines, and checklists just to keep the project moving. Millions of phone calls to banks. Coordinating with moving companies. Negotiating prices with strangers buying your furniture- the same furniture you spent hours assembling. Cancelling subscriptions you forgot you had. Closing accounts. Packing. Repacking because the boxes are overweight. Emptying your pantry and refrigerator of the food you love to snack on at midnight.
And as if this wasn’t exciting enough already, war breaks out two days before your flight, yes, with that Middle East layover. So now you’re coordinating a new longer route (20 hours on a single plane Yay!) which hopefully is also safe.
All while you’re trying to process the fact that you’re leaving a life you spent years building.
I have heard a lot of international students talk about fitting their entire life in two suitcases and a carry-on when first moving abroad. But less of how hard it is to pack the now 10 suitcases' worth of things you’ve half hoarded, half collected. You see, you had to accumulate anything and everything to make your home feel a little less empty.
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The random painting of the beach you picked up from Goodwill for $3. The kitchen utensils from your first paycheck. The throw blanket that made an empty apartment feel less cold. The aloe vera that somehow survived your watering habits. The Trader Joe’s tote bag collection you have started. Fridge magnets from road trips in different states. Concert wristbands you forgot to throw away. Books. Photobooth strips with people you met at that bar once. The cowboy hat because you live in Texas, of course.
Some things I sold. Some I donated. Some I gave to my friends to keep. A surprising amount I threw away. The decluttering was probably overdue. But after living in three different cities in three years, all that decluttering has left my now room back home feeling both fuller and emptier than when I first started.
I guess that’s the cycle. You arrive with two suitcases. You slowly collect a life. Then one day, you convince yourself that someone else probably needs your beach painting more than you do. And somewhere, another international student is probably about to find it at Goodwill and hang it up in an apartment that doesn’t quite feel like home yet.
The whole moving process was such a blur that I still don’t know where half my phone chargers ended up. But I do remember my friends tearing up when I first told them I was moving. I remember realizing just how many lives had become intertwined with mine over those three years. I remember laughing that, at this point, long-distance friendships are probably just a permanent feature of my life, no matter which side of the globe I’m on.
And yet, if someone asked me, a person who lives by the motto of having no regrets, whether I’d do it all over again, I wouldn’t even bat an eye.
I’d buy the beach painting. I’d assemble the IKEA furniture. I’d forget to water the aloe vera. I’d fill another apartment with little pieces of a life. And I’d let those little pieces become secondary to the people who gave them meaning.
Because if the hardest part of leaving is realizing you built something worth missing, then I’d say those three years did exactly what they were supposed to.
