If you've emigrated and consider your adopted country home - tell me what this weird identity crisis/ missing the north sea / Atlantic coasts...

[notnowmaybelater]

I looked at the homesickness threads but that's not it.

I've emigrated, I have citizenship, I've lived in my current house longer than at any other address in my entire life and in my current country for slightly more of the adult part of my life than the UK. My family moved around England and Wales when I was a child and no one town or area of the UK is "home". I know it's not the done thing to admit it but I don't miss my family and stopped missing my friends years ago - the lovely supportive group I had when we left the UK are all geographically dispersed now anyway, I know you can't go back because things change.

I have 3 lovely tween/ young teen children and we live in the EU country of my husband's birth, in the countryside, I don't have contact with ex pats and the other foreigners I know here are Croatian or Russian.

After 13 years away I suddenly feel utterly - exiled?

I miss the sea. Nobody here understands that a tame domesticated lake with grassy banks is not a sodding sea substitute. The Adriatic and Mediterranean are all very nice (nearest coasts) but they're profoundly disappointing when you want the north sea or the Atlantic.

Local radio gives me the rate. Everyone here seems to spend their lives exchanging platitudes and conversations seem to be collections of cliche. The humour is crap - it's an awkward point when people realise that you understand, but you just don't find their comedy amusing. Why are Bavarian comedians all middle aged white men?

I'm a bit overwhelmed atm because I'm doing too much - working, studying, 3 kids all at important stages atm needing support, smallest having some possible specific issues - or maybe not - eldest constantly tired and stressed by the school system although doing very well. Middle one has important decisions to make but just wants to drift and has no sense of urgency.

I feel adrift. Exiled is dramatic but sort of how I feel. Alone. Disconnected but at the same time pulled in 18 directions with too many demands. Every WhatsApp I get requires something time consuming of me. I speak the language but still everything is harder than in English, I make more mistakes and am less eloquent and less literate. It's fucking humbling living your life in a language you didn't start learning until your 30s when you've no talents for languages, and who likes being humbled every day?

But there is no question of going "back" let alone "home" - I'm as home as I'll ever be, although when the children are fully launched and independent I'd like to live near the sea...

Tell me I'm not the only one who feels like this and what it's called?

I think I feel like Ford Prefect (does anyone know what I'm talking about?) ...

I understand your longing for the sea. For me it's the mountains, I grew up in Westen Canada. I never really fit in because I'm a massive lefty and Alberta is very conservative but I still miss it. I have been in the UK for 20 years but some of the cultural references still go over my head.
I don't 100% belong here and I know I'll never be able to go back 'home' because I've changed too much.
Hang in there OP.

My parents moved to Australia when I was 11. I tried my best to fit in but I hated the place and never felt at home so I moved back to live with my grandparents when I was 16 - tears rolling down my face when the wheels touched the runway at Heathrow. It was April and I stood in my grans garden in the rain. It was the best feeling ever. Met my husband on my first day in Med School at 18. I haven't seen or spoken to my parents since. I'll be 43.next year.

I was listening to the 'Fortunately' podcast in the car on my drive to work this morning and the theme of missing the sea and wanting to move back to it as you get older came up - and that was in relation to living in London not a landlocked region of a continental landmass several hundreds of miles from the north sea! Reminded me of the thread but also made me feel less of an oddity!

I only lived abroad for a few years ago many years ago, but what I missed most living in Baden-Wurttemberg and Switzerland was the North Sea coast, so I strongly relate to that part of your post!

It was partly almost a claustrophobic feeling of being trapped being so far from the sea. It was also the need to 'blow away the cobwebs' with a walk on a blustery beach in winter.

I do that now whenever I like. And most of the Scottish North Sea coast isn't crowded at all, far from it!

Laughterisbest I'd like to spend time in both Scotland and Ireland - I always think in the back of my mind that as an English person with a fairly RP accent I wouldn't be very welcome outside tourist areas no idea whether that's actually true! We had a holiday on the Scottish coast sort of parallel with Edinburgh and it was lovely, and we did indeed have a long expanse of beach virtually to ourselves (but it was Easter I think, so definitely jeans and jumpers not shorts and t-shirt, I expect there are more people in summer!)

It's usually jeans and jumpers in summer too!
Summers in southern Germany are very different, sometimes far too hot for me. Warmer than here but cooler than there would be ideal for me.