I will have spent more of my life in Finland as a foreigner, than in Australia as a local.
I didn't move across the planet but I remember feeling that tipping point after living here for longer than I'd been living in the place where I grew up. It was an interesting kinda feeling.
grinding away to ensure that I can stay where I am trapped
The only thing I have to say to this is a rather Singlish WHERE GOT MEANING XD
one who has a little more pigmentation in their skin
That's a mood even when you're local. When I was at uni people assuming I couldn't speak English if they got me on a bad audio day (til I opened my mouth) was not an unusual occurrence. One of the friends I had at the time was this lovely Indian girl who grew up in England and had a British accent and one of her favourite things to do was swan about in a sari and destroy people's incorrect assumptions XD
And Australia having been pretty much a melting pot of a country since colonisation/invasion, I found the whinings of some of the white people I knew terribly funny when they were complaining about how Australia was starting to look like "a foreign country" with the sheer volume of non-white people that were appearing in their areas.
It was even funnier when the local ones were complaining about it to me in person and I'm like hello.
I don't talk to them anymore, but hopefully they've since learned that if they can stop registering me and whatever other friends as "foreign" they should be able to just do that for anyone
Would I look to increase the challenge to make it more difficult again
This bit is easy. Think of all the things that you would do if money wasn't a problem. Things can be "hard" without being hard.
would I self-sabotage in order to return to a point where it was as hard as it was?
I swear people do this all the freaking time, most obviously in relationships XD And then sit there wondering why things "never" work out for them.