What No One Tells You About Starting Over
Starting over isn’t just exciting... it’s messy, emotional, and sometimes lonely as hell. Here’s what no one tells you about leaving behind a familiar life and finding your footing somewhere new.
Starting over sounds exciting, doesn’t it? A fresh start. A blank slate. A new chapter.
And it is all those things. But what no one tells you is that starting over can also be exhausting and disorienting. Sometimes, it’s lonely as hell.
We romanticize reinvention, but the truth is that leaving behind a familiar life comes with its own kind of grief. Even when you choose to go, even when you know it’s the right move, a part of you still mourns the version of life you left behind.
No one talks about how strange it feels to wake up in a new country and realize you don’t know where to buy light bulbs. (Sometimes trying to find a place to do laundry or pick up everyday staples is a grand adventure, but I’ve found that if other things aren’t going right, the fun gets sucked right out of it.)
No one understands how weirdly exhausting it is to exist in a place where every single thing — from language to social norms to the way people cross the street — feels unfamiliar.
“But you’re on vacation, how can you be anything but grateful?!” Erm, no… I’m not on vacation, Rebecca. I’m working my tail off for this life. (But let’s leave the annoying misconceptions others have about our life of luxury and leisure for another day.)
Anyway, the kind of homesickness I’m talking about isn’t just about missing a place. It’s about missing the ease with which you lived your life, as much as you might have wanted parts of it to change.
Freedom and Grief Can Coexist
When I first started spending real time in other places—settling into monthly rentals, testing out new cities—I thought I’d feel nothing but excitement and hope for the future. Like I’d finally stepped into the life I’d been working toward, leaving behind the stress, the noise, the frustration. And to some extent, I did.
But I also felt something I wasn’t expecting: an undercurrent of loss.