Before I left the UK, I sent an old friend an email. I no longer had their number, they'd moved out of the address I had, and I couldn't reach them on social media. I wasn't even sure they used this account any more, but I reached out anyway - across the dark void of both space and time - to let them know I was leaving. To let them know I wouldn't be back. To say some sort of goodbye, although goodbyes were said long ago. I didn't expect a reply, and the darkness didn't answer with one. But somewhere, somehow, I knew they had received my message.
They say when you meet the 'one' for you, you know. I think that's true with many decisions in our lives - some little, some monumental; that courses set into action will irreversibly change your life forever. Sometimes, these are happy moments, like knowing you're with the right person; sometimes they are tinged with guilt and sadness, like closing a door on a chapter you will not revisit again. These are 'sliding door' moments - that if something, however big or small, had or had not happened, your life would be very different.
Although I know, just know, that leaving the UK was the right decision, the knowledge is not an easy burden. I left behind a life that was filled with people and memories, with events and stages that have shaped me as a person and made me who I am, in exchange for one that, although familiar, is entirely new. I grew up here. I remember so many little details. Yet I have been entirely absent for 12 years. I have missed all my friends from those years grow up. I missed their trials and tribulations, their first kisses, their boyfriends, their parents' divorces - and although when I see them again it's like we were never apart, it's wholly surreal. Like I was in a coma and woke up 2 months ago. I have no idea of Australian politics (don't ask me who the last Prime Minister was), or any big news stories. I have a very bad sense of geography (I thought Canberra was North of Sydney until I looked on a map). I say 'football' instead of 'soccer', and 'rugby' instead of 'football', which although sounds quaint in my conditioned English accent, is fundamentally wrong here. I didn't know what 'Goon' was (cheap wine in a bag, what everyone got drunk on as teenagers), or 'schoolies' (Australia's equivalent to Spring Break), and I still cringe whenever anyone calls flip-flops 'thongs'. But despite me feeling like I might as well have lived on the moon for a decade, I know I'm happy. Like, deep down, fundamentally happy. Yet I feel more guilt for being happy than when I wasn't in the UK. Why?
A weekly Skype date with my parents is scheduled every Sunday. Technology has made the world so small that I still sit with them at home through a window spanning thousands of miles, talking to them like I would in person. Since I've been away, my mother has mourned my absence by unpacking my childhood belongings, which haven't seen the light of day for more than a decade. She's put teddy bears on my bed, carefully unpacked books into a new bookshelf, and slowly turned my room into her own kind of shrine. Although this behaviour is not new - when I left for university she turned my pinboard into an organised photographic chronology of my life, and hung portraits of me on the wall - it still makes me feel guilty. I feel my happiness has come at a cost - to them - and it pains me. Although technology makes it so easy for us to communicate, the distance can still be felt, and the distance is great. I don't know how to say I'm not coming back. At least not for good, and not for a long while. We avoid the subject of permanence every time we talk. And while I think we both know the truth, uttering it would break a spell that we have all weaved; that I will return, that I belong there, with them.
It's strange to realise how a life that seemed so all-encompassing, so saturated with people and memories, can so easy be forgotten. Events that haunted me for years have all but evaporated in the space of a few months. Yet I still think back to that rainy night I left the UK, when the weather echoed my emotions, and the email I sent to my old friend. The email that detailed my leaving date, and time, and asked for one last goodbye. It never came. They never came. And although I am several thousand miles away, and living an entirely different life, I am still waiting for it. Perhaps one day it will come, and through a window of a screen I will say a hello that will really mean goodbye.
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Wednesday
Thursday
With Friends Like These...
As a student, I am forever finding new ways to distract myself from doing any work. Stumbleupon, YouTube, Facebook, you name it, I'm probably on it, wasting time. One of the best ways I've found of using up the hours in what would have otherwise been a productive day, is to watch an entire series. Which is what I did a couple of weeks ago (before I went into a full-blown panic upon discovering all my deadlines were in the same week). I got hooked on Season Two of New Girl.
For those who are over the age of 30, or have made a conscientious decision to boycott TV (why?!), New Girl is, essentially, the 2010's equivalent of Friends: a group of twenty-somethings living together, and the problems - and laughs - that this creates. As I said, I went through the entire second series (that's eighteen episodes) in a day or two last month. But even after a few weeks respite, something that one of the characters said has stuck with me, and I've found myself asking myself this question:
I'm an only child. So is my Dad. And my cousins on my mum's side all live in on the other side of the world. Consequently, our family unit is about as small as it could be. Over the years, I've built up a group of friends who have pretty much substituted as siblings for me. They're the ones who I phone if I've got a problem, want a gossip, or swap clothes with. Recently, I've pretty much burnt bridges with half of them. A couple were exes, and I got let down by them - I wanted to be friends, but they, or their girlfriends, had other ideas, which I can understand. That's ok. Time's a healer. Others I've realised that their relationship with me might not be the same as mine with them; they don't call to hang out, gossip, or chat. At first, I put it down to most of them being third years at university - not all of us can be History of Art students with a 5 hour weekly timetable! This is where Facebook's a killer: when your friends don't ask you out, and you see the photos of them getting drunk and going out, you automatically ask yourself - "why wasn't I invited? Is there something wrong with me? Have I done something bad?" It reminded me of a line in a movie that was on TV recently, He's Just Not That Into You. In it, Drew Barrymore's character reminisces about 'the good old days', when people only had one landline, and one answering machine - which either had a message on it, or it didn't. Nowadays, with Facebook, Twitter, Email, Cellphone, and a hundred other mediums of communication, we're rejected on a host of different medias every day - and it's exhausting. So, I guess another question is: what do you do if your friends 'just aren't that into you'?
Well, you could try reaching out to them. But, as I've learned, to be rebuffed and then see photographic evidence of a night out you weren't invited to, is pretty much self-confidence suicide. You could try and make yourself less dependable on your friends, but come on, who wants to be a Norman no-mates, alone every Friday night while all the Facebook statuses roll in about pre-drinks, club nights, and hook-ups? Not me, no thank you. You might think about taking yourself off Facebook, and just saving yourself the hassle and some humility - but then that's just another way of cutting yourself off from civilisation, and one further step to becoming the hermit cat lady who dresses in bin bags. Maybe you need to take a step back, and ask yourself the tough question: are these people really your friends?
Friendship, for me, a lot of the time is about habit. You were friends at school, when you were all shoved together and forced to chose people you got along with to make your time more bearable. Or in university halls, and ditto. They're the people that, when you meet up for a drink, you can say "remember when..." and they do. They know who you were, who you are now, and all the bits in-between, and that's nice. But sometimes, friendship with those people is habitual. People change. They fall in love, they make new friends, they're influenced by existential circumstances you have no power or control over, or can even relate to. Ironically, those I would call my 'best friends' are often people that I didn't have any contact with for years. Even though I haven't been kept up to date on every minuscule happening in their lives, we still never shut up when we finally have a chat. They're like a bookmark in your life: you pick up where you left off. If we continue with this metaphor, other friends are like the wind: they come and fuck up where you were, and you can't remember what happened.
Over the last few weeks, I've discarded quite a few 'windy' friends. A lot, I think, has to do with the fact that I'm planning on moving back to Australia; that I'm off to start a new life, on the other side of the world, and don't need to take any extra baggage with me (in a metaphorical sense. I'll probably have loads of extra baggage.). I guess I've felt like I have nothing to lose by being honest. I've told a few that I'm disappointed with them (that old 'Mum word'), that I've been hurt by them, or I've simply not said anything, and come to terms with the fact that it might not be the end of the world.
To make sure I wasn't going insane with the 'immense pressure' of my final year, I asked a mate if she had ever felt the same. She replied that she has, and does, regularly. It's the wound that is inflicted when you put yourself out there for someone, and they don't reciprocate in the same way, if at all. I suppose sometimes, you have to think of your friends a bit like a boyfriend: if they're not there for you when you need them, if they let you down and make you feel belittled and self-doubting, then there's no point in letting them continue to make you feel like that. Sacrifice in any relationship is good; self-martyrdom is not. Remember, the only person who will be there 'til the very end is you - you might as well make it a pleasant journey.
What are your thoughts?
Love,
Belle x
"If you met your friends today, would you still be friends with them?"
I'm an only child. So is my Dad. And my cousins on my mum's side all live in on the other side of the world. Consequently, our family unit is about as small as it could be. Over the years, I've built up a group of friends who have pretty much substituted as siblings for me. They're the ones who I phone if I've got a problem, want a gossip, or swap clothes with. Recently, I've pretty much burnt bridges with half of them. A couple were exes, and I got let down by them - I wanted to be friends, but they, or their girlfriends, had other ideas, which I can understand. That's ok. Time's a healer. Others I've realised that their relationship with me might not be the same as mine with them; they don't call to hang out, gossip, or chat. At first, I put it down to most of them being third years at university - not all of us can be History of Art students with a 5 hour weekly timetable! This is where Facebook's a killer: when your friends don't ask you out, and you see the photos of them getting drunk and going out, you automatically ask yourself - "why wasn't I invited? Is there something wrong with me? Have I done something bad?" It reminded me of a line in a movie that was on TV recently, He's Just Not That Into You. In it, Drew Barrymore's character reminisces about 'the good old days', when people only had one landline, and one answering machine - which either had a message on it, or it didn't. Nowadays, with Facebook, Twitter, Email, Cellphone, and a hundred other mediums of communication, we're rejected on a host of different medias every day - and it's exhausting. So, I guess another question is: what do you do if your friends 'just aren't that into you'?
Well, you could try reaching out to them. But, as I've learned, to be rebuffed and then see photographic evidence of a night out you weren't invited to, is pretty much self-confidence suicide. You could try and make yourself less dependable on your friends, but come on, who wants to be a Norman no-mates, alone every Friday night while all the Facebook statuses roll in about pre-drinks, club nights, and hook-ups? Not me, no thank you. You might think about taking yourself off Facebook, and just saving yourself the hassle and some humility - but then that's just another way of cutting yourself off from civilisation, and one further step to becoming the hermit cat lady who dresses in bin bags. Maybe you need to take a step back, and ask yourself the tough question: are these people really your friends?
Friendship, for me, a lot of the time is about habit. You were friends at school, when you were all shoved together and forced to chose people you got along with to make your time more bearable. Or in university halls, and ditto. They're the people that, when you meet up for a drink, you can say "remember when..." and they do. They know who you were, who you are now, and all the bits in-between, and that's nice. But sometimes, friendship with those people is habitual. People change. They fall in love, they make new friends, they're influenced by existential circumstances you have no power or control over, or can even relate to. Ironically, those I would call my 'best friends' are often people that I didn't have any contact with for years. Even though I haven't been kept up to date on every minuscule happening in their lives, we still never shut up when we finally have a chat. They're like a bookmark in your life: you pick up where you left off. If we continue with this metaphor, other friends are like the wind: they come and fuck up where you were, and you can't remember what happened.
Over the last few weeks, I've discarded quite a few 'windy' friends. A lot, I think, has to do with the fact that I'm planning on moving back to Australia; that I'm off to start a new life, on the other side of the world, and don't need to take any extra baggage with me (in a metaphorical sense. I'll probably have loads of extra baggage.). I guess I've felt like I have nothing to lose by being honest. I've told a few that I'm disappointed with them (that old 'Mum word'), that I've been hurt by them, or I've simply not said anything, and come to terms with the fact that it might not be the end of the world.
To make sure I wasn't going insane with the 'immense pressure' of my final year, I asked a mate if she had ever felt the same. She replied that she has, and does, regularly. It's the wound that is inflicted when you put yourself out there for someone, and they don't reciprocate in the same way, if at all. I suppose sometimes, you have to think of your friends a bit like a boyfriend: if they're not there for you when you need them, if they let you down and make you feel belittled and self-doubting, then there's no point in letting them continue to make you feel like that. Sacrifice in any relationship is good; self-martyrdom is not. Remember, the only person who will be there 'til the very end is you - you might as well make it a pleasant journey.
What are your thoughts?
Love,
Belle x
Sunday
Easter Egg-Stravaganza
It's Easter! Which, in my books, equals mountains of guilt-free chocolate eating. Not that I ever feel that guilty for eating chocolate, but still. It also means lots of egg-related puns. So that's egg-sactly what you should egg-spect from this post. Let's not egg-saggerate, but Easter's one of the best times of year. Not only do you get a four day weekend, but it also heralds the end of Lent and the start of Spring (or, it would, if all the daffodils hadn't been killed by the snow last week). This year may indeed be one of the last Easters I spend with my family for a while, as I am planning to escape the cold and snow in egg-schange (are you getting egg-sasperated yet?!) for the balmier climate of Australia. So I thought it only fair to 'Kodak-moment' this occasion - and obviously share it with you guys. So here you are: this is our Easter Egg-Stravaganza (that's it, I promise).
Happy Easter - I hope the Bunny was good to you too!
Love,
Belle x
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| Easter Lamb Pie |
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| Creme Eggs can suck it. |
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| Malachite Egg: Not For Consumption |
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| Quiche Soufflé |
Happy Easter - I hope the Bunny was good to you too!
Love,
Belle x
Tuesday
This Is How We Do It...
...Christmas that is. Said in the tone of Mr Montell Jordan in the unforgettable 90's hit:
Every family has it's own ritual, but this is ours. Small as it may be, I'm more than willing to share. So here you have it - the Clare Christmas Extravaganza!
Wherever you are, I hope you had a fantastic Christmas and Santa brought you all you had wished for.
Much love,
Belle x
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| Merry Christmas from Squeaky and Oliver Bear! |
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| Stocking Goodies |
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| Dress: Urban Outfitters |
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| Japes! |
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| Papa C & Moi |
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| Buttered Brussel Sprouts - a Papa C. Speciality |
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| Intense Concentration |
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| Tally Ho! |
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| Sex on Fire. |
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| Look what Santa brought me! |
Much love,
Belle x
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