Featured Image Credit: Courtney El Refai
If you've ever felt annoyed about having to sit in traffic every morning on your way to the office then be thankful that you're not one woman who has gone viral on TikTok, as her commute takes her across several continents and stretches 5,000 miles.
We've all been in moments where the only thing you want is to be at home and sat on your couch but you're stuck in your car or on the train with over an hour left before you get through your front door.
It's a horrible feeling that millions of people experience every single day both to and from their jobs, yet one nurse living between two different continents has it worse than pretty much anyone else when it comes to her travel to work.
As reported by Dexerto, this is the life of per diem nurse Courtney El Refai, who is originally from and continues to work in the United States, but lives all the way across the world in Sweden.
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While this seems impossible for someone with a 'normal' job, Courtney's particular role means that she only works when she's needed, which is often in stretches of time.
While this certainly isn't an ideal way to live, it makes it feasible to travel over to American soil when a job comes up, but she has revealed quite how difficult it is dealing with the 5,000-mile journey every time.
Speaking to Business Insider, the nurse explained that her typical routine sees her travel to the United States every few weeks, with each trip providing her with roughly ten shifts worth of work.
Each trip alone is enough to pay several months' worth of bills back home in Sweden, so it's definitely worth it from a financial perspective, but there are definite drawbacks as she explains in a recent TikTok post.
"A nine hour time difference is absolutely brutal. When I'm in Sweden I struggle to keep in touch with all of my American family, and when I'm in the US, I feel so disconnected from my life in Sweden," she explained.
"Just when I feel like calling someone, I realize they're asleep on the other side of the world," she added, relaying how difficult it is to maintain friendships when you're not there in either place for half the time.
"People expect me to belong in both places, but sometimes I don't feel like I fully fit in anywhere, and just when I finally settle into a rhythm, it is time to pack up and reset all over again."
She's been doing this for roughly nine months now and documenting much of the process across her social media feeds, but despite the difficulties that come with the unique living situation she has "no plans to stop," according to a comment on that video.
