Would I have been happier there?

Sometimes I wonder what I gained from picking myself up and moving to another continent.

Sure, there's the argument that people around me have a better life as a result of me moving, my family can live a peaceful life here without the constant worry that they'll be robbed or killed, my brothers have better opportunities here to make the most out of their lives, but what really has changed for the better for me.

Before I moved here in 2000, I had finished university, finished my internship stint at Barcellos and was working on completing my ACCA. Within a few years I could've reached the top rung of the ladder career wise, bought a house, married and quite possibly become a mother... and all probably before the age of 25.

Instead I chose to come here, where your degree is recognized but it's not enough, where a designation is needed if you plan to reach the top of the ladder, where you're not given all the transfer credits you should receive because UK Accounting Standards are totally different from Canadian Accounting Standards - which is obviously a problem in Canada but not Guyana where most everything is still patterned after the British, where a third of your income goes towards taxes to help pay for services for which you don't even use, where a house and marriage doesn't happen until you're a few years shy of 30, where kids is out of the question for even more years because who can afford them really, and even when you think you can afford them, you can't, because inevitably they'll see the face of their daycare provider for more hours than they see yours... and that's not really affording them.

So yeah, sometimes I do wonder what I gained from leaving home in the first place, maybe it's the whole peace of mind/safety thing, at least here I don't usually spend alot of time worrying about a break and enter and possible loss of life of those that I care about, or maybe it's the fact that I did right by my brothers, Bunny's in his second year at York now and Stefan got 13 A's and 4 B's this term at school. At least some amount of good came out my move, right? What does it matter if I gained anything out of it or not.