box of Jack

Fay cried the night before I left. We sat in the middle of the living room like every other night spent in front of my TV. It is one of the significant moments I remember about leaving Melbourne. She said that once I arrive in Seattle, I would be too busy to miss everyone. So many new things would come along and change would occur at such a pace that I wouldn’t realise what I’d cut out of my life.

She was wrong, of course. I was right, I always am. I hadn’t even left yet and I was missing everything. In the last few months, I was constantly stopping to smell the roses and it was impossible that this hole in my chest could hurt any more than it already did. I took long walks to nowhere in particular and everywhere I walked, I felt like I was home. I couldn’t imagine another home.

The truth is that it hasn’t hurt any more. Not more than that night on the plane hovering over the Pacific Ocean. I mean, that was tough. I was trapped in a tin can in the middle of an ocean, no-one to talk to and no leg room.

Ferry Boat

I’ve been in Seattle now for 3 months now. I wake up; I eat breakfast. I get dressed and I can’t help but feel guilty for not cleaning up my apartment. This weekend for sure, I promise myself. I walk out into the crisp morning air and wait at the bus stop. The bus ride gives me time to reflect before I walk the extra half-mile to my office building and say good morning to my officemate. Life in Seattle has finally become routine. Everyday I pull a crank and I know what to expect.

Routine’s not a bad thing. Not in this context anyway. I’d like to see this routine as a starting point. Here is what I need to do to stay alive, stay employed and stay up-to-date with Grey’s Anatomy. I know where I have free time and I can start planning to fill that free time. It’s simple.

Except, it’s not that simple. It’s becoming apparent that life goes on. Specifically, life goes on in Melbourne. A day at the park; an afternoon spent climbing; a night out on the town. My friends are slowly and surely moving on and I feel like I haven’t allowed myself the same opportunity to move on. There are those days when I wake up and part of me is still living in Australia. It’s this attachment to nostalgia that’s breeding a detachment to what is clearly in front of me. I can finally concede that Fay was right; I’ve been caught up in a whirlwind of apartment hunting, new job and independent living to notice that I’m missing Melbourne.

Sunset

I’ve started thinking about how I need to sort things into two buckets. Things I’ve said ’see you later’ to and things I’ve said ‘goodbye’ to. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t like a turbulent break-up where you try your best to forget the relationship ever happened; it is simply learning to let go of the things I’ve sacrificed to come live in Seattle. I’m not regretting my decision, I’m not burning any bridges and I’m not cutting anyone out of my life. I’m just taking stock. I made a sacrifice. I’ve got to come to terms with the loss.

The biggest thing I’ve said goodbye to is being a pillar in this friendship group. I’m no longer a persistent figure in the lives of some of the most invaluable people I’ll ever know. I won’t be at every birthday party and I won’t be a part of their memories as much as I’d like to be. I watch the emails fly back and forth with plans of drinking, dancing and wasting of time and I know I’m not going to be a part of it.

As much as it bugs me that I’m going to be outside of these activities for a long, foreseeable future, I don’t regret coming to Seattle. Seattle has been extraordinarily kind to me (there are cafes with free wireless everywhere). While I might carry some sadness of loss with me, what the past year in Melbourne has really taught me is how life, by and large, keeps getting better. I am an absolute sucker for nostalgia; my memories are always sepia-toned with gentle flamenco music. But if I’m honest with myself, the distant past sucks in comparison to the more recent past. I wouldn’t change a thing in my life if it meant changing what I’ve experienced over the last 12 months. They were that good.

There are times when I get nostalgic and I try to re-kindle a memory. I might gather up the same people and walk back to the same spot. I learnt that you can try to repeat everything all you ever get is a lacklustre replica. You can’t go back to the lazy Spring afternoon spent gossiping at a cafe table with some of your closest friends and that’s exactly what makes it so worthy of memory.

That’s why I don’t want to go back to the way it was. Because as good as it was then, it’s better now. When I go back to Melbourne, I’m going to catch up with everyone but I’m not going to sigh wistfully and try to re-create what we had “back in the day”.

When I go back to Melbourne, I’m going to kick some ass.