Expat Woes
Being away from home hurts sometimes. Really, truly, hurts.
It’s a physical pain.
I can feel it in my raw, constricted throat. The pain is there each time I try and talk about the way I feel and my words just won’t come out. I can feel it in the heaviness in my chest. In my back and shoulders, they ache like I’ve pulled a muscle, like I’ve been carrying something far too heavy, for far too long. I can feel it in my calves, they’re too tight, like I’ve walked a long way. It’s in my dry, wordless mouth and in my gravelly, tired eyes. And on days like today, low days, blue days, dark cloud days, I just can’t seem to shake it no matter what I do. It follows me around and it nags at me and it whispers to me ‘you just shouldn’t be here, this just isn’t home’.
Today, someone I love and care for so very fucking much, needed me and I couldn’t be there for her. I couldn’t comfort her. Or hold her hand. Or tell her that everything is going to be ok. I couldn’t go with her, or be with her afterwards, or make her laugh or be there while she cried. Instead, I am here, feeling useless and guilty and shitty and useless and guilty.
I hate this decision that I have made sometimes. I hate being here. I hate that being here feels like choosing him over home. I hate missing home. Something is missing all of the time. I miss all of the time.
I miss Flynn, perhaps the greatest dog in the world. I miss her bedtime cuddles, and her sparky morning attitude. I miss her contagious enthusiasm for every brand new day.
I miss her mopey ‘please give me another bit of your wagon wheel‘ eyes. I miss her ‘awww, don’t be sad’ licks every time I cry. And I hate knowing that she must wonder where the fuck I upped and went to.
I miss my best friend. I miss his humour and his constantly optimistic attitude. I miss our long morning talks and our dinners together. I miss our in-jokes. I miss being understood without having to speak. I miss the sense of ease I feel when we are together.
I miss my work. My real work. My ‘use your brain while you work’ work. And I hate the joke of a job that I have here.
I miss Australia.
And I didn’t think I would ever say that.
I miss dust storms and tumble weeds, big blue skies, the wide, vast, green, brown land. I miss scale and perspective. I miss the ocean, the thump of the waves, the sheer size of home. I miss the freedom and the isolation, the grief that you can feel in the land and it’s peoples. I miss the hardness, the gently rolling hills. I miss the Southern Cross. I miss the never-ending ‘as far as my eyes can see’ horizon. I miss Australia. I miss place.
And I hate that this place, this ancient, beautiful, strange and yet familiar place, is feeling more and more like home everyday. I hate that. I hate that I am beginning to experience this place as home. I hate that this place has helped me to heal and to grow and to live braver than I have ever lived before.
But most of all, I hate it that today, I couldn’t be there for the one person, the ONE person I wouldn’t have made it through this life without.
