Thoughts from the Treasury Gardens, Melbourne

I miss my friends, I really do. I would love to go to the Hogs in Aberdeen, Huddies in E.K. or the Slug and Lettuce in York for a night out with my friends. I miss inviting myself to dinner and sharing wine whilst watching Strictly or a film. I  miss being able to pick up the phone and talk to them. I miss my family. I miss my daily hugs from my mountain friends and hanging out in the Railway Square YHA common room in Sydney. Yet right here and right now I am happy. Sitting in the treasury gardens by myself knowing there is nowhere I need to be. No-one I need to report to. Nothing I need to do. Well, except buy cake on my way back to my friends apartment. I am happy in my own company.

I worry about this sometimes. I love my friends, worry about them, care for them and am happy when good things come their way but I am okay about the fact I am not always there to share those moments with them. Does this mean I don’t care as much as I should? Is it grief that has made me this way? I built my world around one person and I thought that they would always be there. I was wrong. Maybe that makes me scared to care too much, too deeply, to dependently. Am I scared to love?

I don’t want anyone to depend on me. I don’t want to be anyone persons all and everything. I want to travel. I like meeting new people and discovering new places. To live like this I need to let people go. I’m getting good at letting people go never knowing if I’ll see them again or not. Am I cold? Or am I just practical?

Yet.

Whereas my first six months was about meeting new people and discovering new friendships my second six months are shaping up quite differently. I’m in Melbourne spending time with two very different friends. One I met whilst travelling in the USA last year and one from my time in the snow. Before Melbourne I returned to Sydney specifically to see some friends from my first six weeks in Australia and some different friends from the snow. Tomorrow a friend from the UK arrives, my second UK friend in fact. Once she leaves I shall be meeting yet more friends from the snow before heading to the west coast to stay with family.

I’m still seeing new places and meeting new people but mow they are friends of friends not randoms. It’s nice. It gives me hope that despite my worries of not being there for my friends I can still be their friend. I sometimes feel bad that I had to come half way across the world to get to know myself, to work out who and what I am. I know it’s hard to understand as I’m only now beginning to comprehend it for myself.

The thing is I’m somewhat of a wiki friend. I’ll be whatever my friends need me to be. Not on purpose, it’s just who I am. I tend to understand and I think it’s fair to say I have a decent amount if empathy. I like that I can make people feel better. I want to support my friends I but I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t be there for them and figure out what I wanted and how I wanted to live my life. I had to walk away from everyone else’s opinions, ideas, morals, ethics, thoughts, emotions, hopes and ideals because there were too many. Not one of my friends would impose any of this on me I just absorb it switching between them like a chameleon changes it’s skin. I found myself falling back in to this habit when I was in the mountains. I think I do it because it helps me to understand other people, which is fine up to a point. What I am trying to learn is where my centre is so I can still see where my friends are at but return to me. Having said that I don’t want my ‘centre’ to be fixed. I need it to be flexible but the changes to it have to be considered. Not this flitting from one place to the next as is my habit.

When I arrived here I felt tired and older than my years. Now I feel young. I am uncertain. I am unsure. I do not know what tomorrow will bring and it doesn’t bother me. I have half a dozen ‘homes’; not places that belong to me but places where I belong. My friends are my extended family. I love them and I miss them but I know they are always going to be there for me. They might not understand my wandering but they accept it as part of who I am.

 When I arrived I hated that I was no longer the world to one person but now I realise that as no one person is my world either and that makes me free. I know my friends are taking care of each other. There is not one friend I can think of and not think of at least one person who is there for them that they can always count on and I know that just because that person isn’t me it doesn’t mean they love me any less. They simply do not need me there and that is a gift I am fortunate to receive many times over.

When I first told people what I was going to do some though that I was running away. Maybe in part I was but now I am sure I was also running towards. I knew I needed this. I’m not afraid to love. More than one person has found space in my heart since I got here; joining the many friends and family I left behind. I’m not afraid to stay. If I’m needed somewhere I’ll stay as long as I am needed. But I love to travel. I love to explore new places. My grief is the same as it ever was but my jar is certainly bigger and I look forward to discovering how big I can make it. It will never be so big that my grief is lost. I would still swap this life for my old one in a heartbeat. But I can’t. And somewhere in the last six months I have started to accept that this is my life and that in this way I can live it, just as Jonathan would want me to.