Curious Thing

It’s a curious thing living on the wrong side of the world. Wrong, as in, far from loved one – family and friends, those that one feels one should be on hand to love up close, offer support, share laughter and picnics and stacking the dishwasher. Physical distance manages to translate into something more than emotional distance and lost time, although to varying degrees depending on the strength and flexibility of the relationship’s rubber band.

You can never quite recover the lost opportunities. Although perhaps it shouldn’t so much be about the losing, as in gaining from conducting each relationship on a different plane. No longer able to meet for long, lazy coffee catch ups in the sunshine of a Sunday afternoon; no longer able to test the limits around the outdoor table as the barbeque sizzles in the background. Out of touch with growth spurts and increasing vocabulary; out of touch with the gathering clouds of a doomed relationship or the illumination of a new love. Not on hand for hospital visits, weddings or unforeseen work crises. Too far away for routine phone calls from mum at 6pm, as work shoes are kicked off, post opened and dinner preparations begin.

Instead it’s the era of emails and instant messaging chats when the clocks are aligned. I always believe that people communicate differently when they have to write it down. For some it allows a higher degree of openness, exposing secrets and vulnerabilities that perhaps would not have been verbally revealed. For others it’s a barrier, the effort of accessing the computer, typing it out, editing what’s been said so as to not offend, the opportunity to over think…it all gets a little clinical and impersonal by the time it’s read.

I just don’t know what to do about the diverging forces within me. The desire to live away from Australia, travel, stretch the comfort zone to the point where it threatens to snap, and the little voice, that constant drip of guilt that tells me I should be home, closer to nieces and nephews who are changing with each new sunrise. Closer to sisters that struggle with their own problems, some of them shared, many of them not. The gossip of friends, the giggles, the tears flowing as their lives, intermittently and dramatically explode just to remind us that we are all not really okay. That constant drip, drip, drip of guilt has left a water smudge on my heart, and I know it will always be there. There is no escaping that someone somewhere is going to wish we were nearby be it to clink glasses to toast the newlyweds, or discuss the pros and cons of medical treatments, or use the dregs of the teapot to water the pot plants.

It’s a strange thing leaving so much that you love in your wake. Why can’t I settle in one place, and decide to stay, for good? Why do others not question their decision to buy that house, in that suburb, and know that they will raise their kids there, sleep in the same bedroom for the next twenty years? Will I still feel impelled to be away when I’m sixty? What is it that I’m searching for, so far from all that is comfortable, secure, and straightforward? Can it just be the challenge, the danger and the complications that draw me away?

I don’t know.