Expats are used to coming and going, but what happens when your children move country and you stay behind? In the sixth in a series of new articles, Ata Bos writes candidly about her confrontation with an empty house after her sons leave Finland for a new life in Holland, her country of origin.

At home on the evening after the weekend at the cottage, I clean the car, unpack, drop laundry into the basket, pick up my laptop from the floor, and sit down with a coffee. Googling terms like ‘empty nest,’ ‘burnout,’ ‘winter blues,’ ‘menopause,’ and ‘depression’ hadn’t occurred to me before. It’s as if for three weeks I’ve been a deer in headlights, scared so I stood still, and now, after fetching wood and boiling water, I have some energy and curiosity. I’m in control again. I can do something.

Pressing return throws up medical websites, female self-help sites, parenting support sites, and sites on mid-life crises.  Perhaps because I google everything I can think of, the first information I come across seems both familiar and alien. On ‘empty nest’ sites, women talk about sitting in their children’s empty rooms and calling them daily, but I’ve only cleaned my sons’ rooms, and not every day. Menopause forums discuss hot flushes, which I don’t have. On ‘seasonal affective disorder’ sites, posters mention eating and sleeping a lot, but I do the opposite. The most familiar information appears when I search for ‘burn-out’; on an online forum, people talk of heart palpitations, lack of sleep and appetite, and non-interest in surroundings.

The quantity of text is confusing, which was perhaps the point of googling everything I could imagine. I don’t want to have ‘burnout.’ The ‘burnout’ symptoms fit my feelings closely, but I want them to belong to another ailment, so I consider that there must be something terribly wrong with me. I think of coronary problems, brain tumours, and borderline personality. I imagine myself in an isolation cell of a psychiatric ward in a white skirt, shivering, on a mattress on the floor, sipping from a paper cup.

Next morning, after another sleepless night, I decide it might be best to finally go and ask for help from the doctor. I call the health centre for an appointment on Tuesday. Until this point, I’ve managed to live on a pattern of two days sick leave, one day back at work; two days off, one day back at work, convincing myself again and again that I was having ‘a bad day,’ and that forty-eight hours sitting on a couch staring would make everything better.

The doctor listens to my mangled Finnish, offers tissues, and asks questions about work and family. ‘What is the problem?’ she says.  ‘I’m upset,’ I answer. I talk about the boys leaving and being upset at work. I cry for ten minutes. We sit opposite each other and when she diagnoses and advises me, her sentences are long and official-sounding; the words are strange. I understand the basics: I have acute stress reaction or ‘akuutti stressireaktio.’ I say I’m writing a diary; she says this is a good idea so as to become more self-aware, and that I should take walks for the fresh air. ‘If you think writing helps you, you should write,’ she says.

‘Would you like to see a psychologist?’ she asks. At this, I look at her and tilt my head backwards and forwards to indicate I really don’t know if this is necessary. She takes this hint, telling me I can see one if I want, and writes a note for an echocardiogram and two weeks of sick leave, and says to return after two weeks if things do not improve.

I make an appointment for the echocardiogram and a blood test, then walk to the car. My immediate sensation is relief. My sadness has a name. It wasn’t my imagination. I wasn’t packed off to yoga classes or to see a brain surgeon. And I don’t have to attend work for two weeks; I can be at home in my own little world and focus on myself. After putting off going to the doctor and being diagnosed, the prospect of being alone makes me feel light-headed.

Back in the living room, two weeks seems far too short. I devise a plan to observe and write about myself.  This will also involve: buying vitamin D tablets and calcium pills, lowering my coffee intake to two cups a day, and using the SAD light therapy alarm clock. I’m on my own at home for the first time in twenty years—my husband’s away on a business trip—and I call and promise I’ll meet friends, which I don’t, preferring to be alone thinking. I consider if I like being in Finland; also my upbringing; whether my friends are actually my friends; how moving country has affected me; if I should change job or study at university; if I enjoy cooking or not; if my husband and I can continue together without our boys; and what I’ve done ‘wrong’ or ‘right,’ what ‘successfully’ or ‘unsuccessfully.’

I find a web report about acute stress and print it into booklet form. ‘Having acute stress,’ says the report, ‘means trauma has taken place,’ resulting in tiredness, loneliness, sadness, and powerlessness. It strikes me that my grief relates to disconnectedness, as if I’m in transition now as much as I was when I first moved to Finland. I’ve spent twenty years shaping my life around caring for family, friends, and clients, and conforming to other people’s needs without processing my own needs, boundaries, and feelings.

When I started working in 1991 as a nurse in Holland, I knew what I wanted; after that, things seem fuzzy. I should consider what to do with my freedom, and not fall back into old habits, should reassess my needs and act on them, I think. Right now, the task seems overwhelming, but I’ve time, I realise, and mean to get there.

Then almost immediately I feel overwhelmed again. My sadness probably has links to living abroad; questioning why I live and work in Oulu seems certain to result in moving to another country or resigning, with social, financial, and emotional consequences for me and my family. I can’t make these decisions right now. I think about the phrase, ‘damned if you stay, damned if you go,’ which is another way of saying you can’t run away from yourself. Changing job or country right now would be an emotional quick-fix, I think, would give me a false sense of accomplishment. I’ve no other choice than using two weeks to develop a strategy to reshape my life where I am.

Mum in Transition 1,  2,  3,  4, 5,  7, 8, 9,