On rain-soaked laundry, a stubborn chill, and the courage to go back to gather strength for my new home.
Six months. That’s how long it’s been since I last sat down to write. And in those months, life didn’t just happen, it unfolded, in all its messy, glorious, and gut-wrenching layers.
Let me start with the good news, the milestone we had been waiting for: Our Temporary Residency Cards (TRCs) arrived. Just days before Christmas.
It felt like a miracle wrapped in bureaucratic plastic. Finally, tangible proof that we belonged here, at least for the next two years. Finally, the key that unlocked something I hadn’t realized I desperately needed: the freedom to leave.
Because, to be honest, by the time December rolled around, I was breaking.
Lisbon’s winter had become my quiet adversary. It wasn’t dramatic. No snowstorms, no frozen pipes. It was the slow, persistent erosion of my last reserves of patience and perseverance. Week-long spells of rain that turned the sky into a permanent, oppressive grey. The daily, hopeless ritual of checking the laundry, only to find it still damp, because without a dryer, the air itself refused to cooperate. The cold that seeped into my bones despite a dehumidifier humming and a portable heater glowing defiantly in the corner.
I missed my room. My garden. The simple, profound act of sitting in sunlight without having to first battle a biting wind. Here, to get any sun at all, I had to leave the apartment, bundle up, and venture outside. Only to find that the cold wind made it impossible to actually soak up any warmth. I remember standing in a rare patch of winter sun in a park, my face tilted upward, and feeling… nothing. The heat was there, but it was stolen by the air before it could reach my skin.
I was miserable. And the worst part was coming home, not to a warm, cozy sanctuary, but to a cold apartment that seemed to mock my every effort to heat it. My body was tired. My spirit was frayed.
So when those TRC cards landed in our hands, I didn’t celebrate by doing a celebratory dance. I celebrated by booking a flight. I ran back to Pakistan.
Not because I had given up on Portugal. But because I needed to remember who I was before the transition swallowed me whole.
Going back was like exhaling after holding my breath for half a year. The familiarity wrapped around me like a thick, woolen blanket. My room. My garden. The sun that actually landed on my skin and stayed there. My kitchen. The sound of my family’s voices from the different parts of the house. The chaos, the noise, the maddening, beautiful, familiar everything of Pakistan.
I didn’t have to think about laundry or heaters or dehumidifiers. I just was. I breathed. I slept in my own bed. I let the accumulated weight of the move. The paperwork, the adaptation, the constant low-grade anxiety of being a foreigner, slid off my shoulders, one day at a time.
I unpacked the load of the transition. Not literally, my suitcases were emptied. We left in four, and came back in three. But emotionally. I untangled the knots in my chest. I remembered that I am not just an immigrant, not just a mother holding it together, not just a woman navigating a new language. I am also a daughter, a sister, a friend. I am someone who belongs somewhere, deeply and unconditionally.
And that belonging gave me the strength I needed to return.
Because here is the truth I came back with: Portugal is my home now. But Pakistan will always be my home forever. And that duality is not a weakness. It is a superpower. It means I have two places to draw strength from. It means when one winter breaks me, the other can piece me back together.
The TRCs gave me legal residency. But the journey home gave me the emotional residency I needed to truly stay.
Has there been a moment in your own journey when you needed to go back to move forward?
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