a spare friday night...

It’s Friday. 10:12pm

I decided to turn Netfix off for the night. Four candles lit, ok three now; I swivelled my chair around to see that the candle by the window had melted down into a pile of white wax attaching itself to picture frames and running down the wall, into a crack that was there before I moved in… I promise.

‘In Rainbows’ is playing, the vinyl spins, and I left the lid up. The sound carries, I put the second speaker on the other side of the room and I’m glad I did.What is it, fifty-one days? Fifty until I leave? Yes, fifty. Not just leave this room, this house, this suburb, this state but this country…home.

It’s a good thing. It is. I just have to take time and look at things, these things in this room. The places I go, the people; the people I love because I’m counting and unlike some seasons where you may only feel a change, this one has a definite, abrupt ending and I know it.

“I don’t wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover” 

 this song is playing now and I’ve always been drawn to lyrics I don’t understand maybe because I have to try harder to find meaning. One of my two plans this year is to see Radiohead play at one of the five festivals they’re headlining in Europe.

There’s so much to do, you know?

I have these extravagant ‘to do’ lists-

+things to think about

+friends living there

+predicted costs/payments so far

+work I could get

+visa check list

+notes on travel

+things I want to do before I go

That’s not even all of them…

 =i took this in Tasmania= 

And you know I wanted to do some really neat things before I left like give away all my art work and write a letter to someone different everyday and take more photos and get better at life admin but it’s not really happening, especially that last one…I am thirty in a few weeks, are you ever ready for your next year, your new number?I’m thankful I was never one of those girl that had grand ideas of “settling down” by any certain age. I’m anything but settled; I’ve never really liked the sound of that, to “settle down”. If to settle means to be comfortable then I want none of it. I am determined to fight comfort until the end. Although I do have fleeting thoughts of a lovely someone, some day… I feel like it’s overwhelming because I’m doing this on my own. This is the way I’ve always done things and so I believe it’ll work out but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The nerve pain in my L5 S1 came back yesterday and walking is hard again now and all my thoughts took me right back to this time last year, when the pain was at it’s worst and I felt it all. 

I felt so alone… It’s this world, this culture.I attended the Melbourne travel expo on the weekend. They shouted out special over the PA system while herding us through the gates. There were people breathing on each other, so many people. Holding flyers, selling you your next grand adventure, shiny free gifts; pens, luggage labels and other useless items. Granted, I use pens, a lot, but still I wasn’t interested; probably because they were plastered with labels so you could walk away and still be a sales person on their behalf.I’m traveling on my own, looking for a one-way flight; I know it’s my choice. I’d signed up for some travel info session- [the first of a series of poor choices...actually I think being there was technically the first] endless power-point presentations on how much better your life will be when you leave the country with someone you like. All the “Expo Specials” were for those traveling in a pair or in groups, all the flight sales were for return airfares. I’d been there wandering aimlessly for three hours until a friendly “expert” lead me to a line where I waited an hour, while couples and families made their plans around me; smiling and laughing at their future, as if making plans and reality were the same thing.

=i took this in Tasmania #too= 

I wanted to be patient, I wanted to be ok, and I wanted to control my feelings; particularly when an elderly couple pushed their way in front of me after I hit the forty-minute waiting mark. Yet I also wanted to try and understand what it was I was experiencing in that moment.The only redeeming quality of the expo was the free wifi, I sat down on the floor, a million strangers moved around me as I streamed The National into my ears to calm me. I had never wanted to be swallowed up by the music more than in that moment.

I love spending time on my own. Sometimes it just hits me that I don’t know what any other way is like. I’ve been on my own for so long that I have naturally adapted. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner, sometimes I feel like my only friend is the city I live in….” and I’m leaving that behind too.

There on the floor flicking through some travel magazines that I never asked for, which came with the free tote bag, labelled “Live, Love, Travel” my eyes began to well up as I remembered traveling through Tasmania a year ago, one night at a restaurant… and that conversation while ordering my meal.

Waitress: any thing else?

Me: No thanks.

W: so, that will be all?

M: ahh yeah… thank you.

W: you don’t want to order another meal?

M: who for?

W: you must be waiting for someone… or is it just you?

M: it’s just me.

W: sorry… we don’t really get many people eating here alone.

After that awkward interaction I began to wonder about our culture; I wondered why restaurant tables are preset for two or more people. In a world were we are constantly fighting for independence or a sense of individuality, we need only to look around us and see that almost every corner implies co-dependence is the ‘normal’, acceptable and approved way of living. Just once I’d like to go somewhere the seating is arranged and see a place set for one.I am happy with the way I’m living and for that I give no credit to a culture that suggests that I am not enough on my own, when that is exactly what I am. Enough. And so are you.