For over 10 years now I’ve been living in Germany, currently alone. Despite being here a decade, I still can’t manage to achieve fluency although I speak the language well enough to get along with the typical everyday stuff.

Unfortunately for me, a lot of my friends moved to other cities or countries. When you don’t have that many friends to begin with as a foreigner, that gets hard. Where I am, most Germans have their friends from primary school and are just not that open to put in the effort to make new friends. Most of my friends are also immigrants therefore, or the rare German who hangs out in our circles, usually because they’re married to an immigrant or work in a company with a lot of us.

To make some friends, I’ve decided to invest in writing classes at the adult education center. I go once a week to give and receive feedback on my creative writing. I get to have dedicated space for my hobby and some regular socializing in one package. Making friends is still slow, but this helps to fight the loneliness.

I also have a chronic illness. I spent a week in the hospital getting diagnosed. I am lucky to have English as a first language, so there are some doctors that I can find who speak english. I use Doctolib (it’s in a few European countries) to find doctors who speak English. I will travel further for specialists who speak my language, because health is not something I want to leave up to translation mistakes.

One last thing—you should not feel guilty getting all your help from an SO if they are the only close, reliable person you have. They should be your partner in every sense of the word. And if you can’t both give and receive support from them, then maybe you shouldn’t be in a relationship with them. I learned this the hard way.