The Choice
By Amber Willard
While working one of my 12-hour overnight shifts in an IBM computer chip foundry, I decided to leave. Not just the company, but also the country.
Each night was the same routine: The hours were long, the machinery was loud. Sometimes the monotony was interrupted when one of my machines decided to malfunction or break down. While I enjoyed working with technology, the boredom of doing the same thing night after night, week after week, made me anxious.
I grew up in a small city in Vermont that was more like a town. The closest I ever got to another country was what I saw on television. I enjoyed documentaries throughout my childhood. It was quite difficult to relate to my peers; while they found history and foreign culture dull, I thrived on the subjects. Stories from far away lands captivated me, but I never knew until I was in my older teens that these places were reachable. You could actually go to England, where King Henry VIII reigned during the Tudor times. You could walk where the 1968 Prague Spring happened in the Czech Republic.
My nerdy interests isolated me from not only friends, but from family as well. When my sixteenth birthday approached, my grandparents asked me how I wanted to celebrate the milestone. I blurted out, “I want to go to Fort Ticonderoga!” I remember the shocked look on their faces to this day.
Growing up as an only child raised by grandparents in a working class family molded me into an independent woman. I became accustomed to being on my own most of the time, entertaining myself reading and writing. I became an avid reader during my teens; but it was rare to find anyone around me who loved books. When I went into the American workforce and started to be around other people, I quickly got used to being invited over to their homes just to watch a film. Plans to travel or go out somewhere, even just for a walk, were uncommon. Gatherings during major holidays were the only time I was able to see most of my family members who were one or two generations older than me. Having a conversation with any of them was difficult. After a few minutes of talking, the discussion was over and they would talk among themselves and I was left alone to listen. This behavior never bothered me, but it made me used to being an outsider with my own interests.
I am a child of the 1990s, and was raised alongside the Internet. I still remember the first time I went into an online chatroom and found international people to talk to. England, Germany, they were all there. I never thought I would have the opportunity to talk to people who lived in the places that I watched in documentaries.
The Internet provided a way for me to connect to people overseas with like-minded interests. It was these people who congratulated me when I worked my way through university and finally graduated. (My family never celebrated my achievement, despite being the only one who went to college.)
But after I went to work for IBM, I made the decision to leave the country once and for all, and move to Europe.
I researched how to relocate to another country for over a year. I travelled to Germany and Italy for vacations, but realized I did not want to live in these countries. I found the Czech Republic the best choice, because of their history and culture, full of kings and legends. It also played a major role in World War II, which is a subject I’ve always been interested in. The Slavs are big readers who lived in a historical and artistic country. Their country preserved their architecture, and survived the wars without major damage, and when you stroll their walkable cities, you always have something to look at.
I don’t think my family took my dreams of moving to the Czech Republic seriously until the last of my possessions was sold in a yard sale. The idea of moving out of their daily routine life seemed to scare them, as it does many people who find comfort in familiar surroundings. For someone like my grandparents, moving to another country that is on the other side of the world is terrifying. These are people who went to the same place for vacation every year.
I found the choice I made to leave the country to be the best choice of my life. Even though it has now been seven years since I moved, I still remember walking out of the airport on an August night at 23:00. I had never set foot in the Czech Republic before then.
But I was not afraid. What I felt was excitement and freedom. I was home.
Amber Willard is an English teacher based in Prague, Czech Republic. She enjoys traveling to historical places around Europe to glean inspiration for her research and writing.
