Wanna buy a car? (Please don't)

We've really reached the point of---well, obviously, not of no return but of difficult return. This summer shed ourselves of our American house and most of our furniture. It sounds pathetic, but shutting the door to the storage unit nearly brought me to tears. This week my dad listed my car on Craig's List. I'm so glad that my dad is taking care of selling my car while I am on another continent. I really would not be able to do it myself. I am sure I would just throw myself across the hood and cry. For me, it was love at first sight with this car.

More importantly, though, the car is the last thing to go. We have no home of our own in the US. Unlike a lot of the expats I meet here in Shenzhen, we also have little possibility of a job to return to in the US either. When Randy was still working for an American company, there was always in my mind a chance that we could be relocated back to the US. And now we haven't our own--MY OWN--car. If we had to return to the US to live, there would be little to cushion that landing. We really, truly live here. After two and a half years this shouldn't come as such a shock to me, but it does. As long as we still had something of our own life there, it made living here feel less permanent to me. We miss our family and friends much more than material things, but from now on, we won't be coming home to the US to see you. We'll just be visiting.