Adelaide

Tuesday 13th August 2019

It’s a weird feeling packing up your life and moving to another country, on the one hand it’s exciting, a massive adventure of who knows what the hell will happen. On the other hand, it’s sad to say goodbye to the people you love and to close the door on what might have been with people you leave behind. For me especially, it’s a fresh start. I’m leaving behind in Adelaide a lot of love but also a lot of heartbreak. In Adelaide I’m a daughter, sister, aunty, friend, marketing manager and widow. In London, I’m nobody. And somehow that feels damn good. I get to rewrite my story. Or more so, finish the chapters that came before and start a new one, with hope that the story is just getting better and I’m one chapter closer to my happily ever after. Not necessarily with a knight in shining armour but with myself.

And that’s my why. If you have a minute, watch the TED video from Simon Sinek called start with why. Yes, it’s marketing blubber but what it comes down to is everyone and everything finding their authentic why, their reason for existing, their purpose. I’m on a mission to find me, I mean I know where I am, sitting on a plane, no need to send a search party, but I want to take some time to find my inner light again, I feel like it’s been on dim for so long. There’s been some moments this year, one especially where I felt my light shine again, I know how good it feels to be in a moment and feel love and happiness. I want more of those moments. And I know they need to come from me, not rely on someone else to make me feel it. And yeah, maybe I could have done that in Adelaide, but I know I needed to step out of my comfort zone and find me through meeting new people, exploring the world and taking pleasure in the wonders of life. Ok, that’s enough blah, blah, blah for now, I’m sure there’s plenty more where that came from!

Right now I’m sitting on a plane, Sydney bound then onto London Town, with a quick pit stop in Singapore. Really didn’t read those flight details carefully! So let’s start at the beginning, why would I choose to be jobless and homeless, pack up my life and leave all those that I love?? …Ooo, this is harder than I thought to write… maybe the better question is, why not?? There’s the saying “Life is short”, but think about it, life is the longest thing you’ll ever do. I’ve never been content to sit in one place and do the same thing over and over again. That is after all the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result! Life threw me a curve ball a few years back when Brett died, but in all honesty, my head and heart already weren’t in a good place when that happened. It’s taken me a lot of time to deal with his sudden death, trying not to blame myself, accepting that sometimes you never get a final goodbye, a chance to tell someone you love them. That is life, and it’s not fair… a hard lesson to learn, but to every negative, there’s a positive, it’s the natural order of things. Yes life isn’t fair, but life can also be bloody mind blowing amazing. The feeling of falling in love, the feeling of hugging someone you love and feeling like your heart will burst with how much you feel for them (Marcus and Annabelle, I’m looking at you!), and then the feeling of love hugging your parents goodbye at the airport, seeing their eyes well up with tears, the feeling of being that loved is like nothing else in the world. So yeah, life isn’t fair but when you’re surrounded by that much love, does it matter?? OMG, it turned into another blah blah blah moment… the tears are running down my face and the dude next to me is giving me awkward sideways glances… on a roll so may as well keep rolling… if only I could remember where i was going with all that blah blah blah… hmmm, oh yeah, why am I doing this?? That’s right, life isn’t fair, but when you’re surrounded by love, take the turd, roll it in glitter and make life one big adventure. So that’s my why not. Life has been a turd, travel is my glitter. Plan on finding my inner light again and becoming a disco ball… hehe.. that went downhill quickly!!! Now I’m laughing at myself and I think the dude next to me is questioning my sanity…

So now I’m London bound. Between the tears and laughter there’s a big smile on my face. I’m excited, not nervous at all, I know that the next 18 months will be what I make it. There’s no such thing as fate, things happen because you choose them to. Everything that’s happened in my life is a result of choices I made, in hindsight some weren’t so great, would like a rewind button for a few but they have all led me here. Sitting in seat 24A, drinking my bad coffee, sun shining through my window, and writing like a know it all. But in reality I’m Jon Snow, I know nothing.

Oh yeah, the story on how I got here. It’s no secret I love to travel, it’s my glorious addiction. There is so much of the world to see and experience, I want to go everywhere and do everything. And I’m going to spend the next 60 years doing it cos I plan to live to well over 100 and by then will have a robotic body that allows me to galavant around the world like a 19 year old. Ugh, sidetracked again…Before heading off to spend last Christmas in Europe with my bestie, I decided to sell my apartment in Prospect, take the $$$ and spend from March this year to Jan 2020 traveling. Few curve balls along the way… apartment didn’t sell, fell in love and got my heart broken but I sill ended up on the same path, albeit the “travel” turned into “live” and the 9 months into 18 but all in all, same path. Luckily for me I’m the daughter of a pom so was able to get my British passport. Few hoops to jump through, having to travel to Melbourne to get my British citizenship because I’m an old fart born before 1983, but if you read my blog from my Melbourne trip, you know I had a blast! So now I’m a certified scone eating, tea drinking Brit. Except when it comes to sport, I’m 100% Aussie.

Being a Brit, I’ve got free reign to live and work in the Europe, until Brexit ruins it for me. So the plan is to spend the next month traveling and working on me. Inside and out. I feel best when I’m fit, not a bit pudgey like I am now from way too many farewell drinks and dinners. Wouldn’t take a single one back though, except maybe the 2am Macca’s run. I plan on joining the F45 cult and becoming a fitness fiend. But balancing that with Pilates and the thing I’ve never been able to master, meditation. How the hell anyone can get their mind to stop running at a million miles an hour is beyond me but apparently it’s possible. Being able to turn off the endless chatter in my head at 2am would be a good skill to master. I’m also going to take the time to focus on what makes me tick, besides bacon and gin. And most importantly, work on rebuilding my confidence, to silence the voice in my head that tells me I’m not enough, a voice that got louder from spending too much time caring about what other people think. It’ll be hard, if it was easy everyone would walk around in a bubble of super self awesomeness. I don’t intend to be an egotistical twat, but just to accept who I am and when I meet people, be confident that I have something to offer, friendship, love, kindess. We’re all our own worst judges, I wanna start giving myself more than a 5 out of 10. Wow, this whole post has turned into a sermon, so not about the impending adventure!?! Instead an insight into my inner psyche, hope you’re not scared!!

Now onto the adventure bit!! I’m lucky to enough to have a bestie living in London, the fabulous Kyles so going to crash with her for as long as she can put up with me (ugh, inner voice telling me 5 minutes, shush), then wanna housesit people’s pets as a way of getting free accommodation, but also to figure out what parts of London float my boat so I know where I wanna live. And plan to do some temping work to meet people, and most importantly earn some $$ cos in this world only love is free, and even then… In just under 4 months I’m USA bound to meet the fam in LA then head to Canadia for a white Christmas with my Canadian family who are equally as awesome, then off to Mexico for a wedding. So much adventure already planned I’m doing a happy dance, well not literally, the dude next to me might throw me up out the window… so when I’m back Londonside in Jan 2020 I’ll be looking for a more permanent job and somewhere to live for the next 12 months to come. Sounds like a plan yes??? Oh, and then I’ll be back in RADelaide in Jan 2021 to spend 9 months doing my thesis for my Psychology honours, then I’ll defrost my eggs and have some babies. Easy peasy.

So it’s taken me over a month to post this, meant saying goodbye to one of the best trips of my life and my bestie… but here it is, written some time ago…

You know the saying, all good things must come an end! And damn have I been on a good thing!!

Wanting to savour hanging with my bestie until the very last moment, I rose before the sunrise to cook brekkie for Kyles before she headed to work. In hindsight, my cooking is not the nicest farewell present, she smiled and ate it anyway. I’m not great at good byes, I tend to talk gibberish about inconsequential bullshit, avoid eye contact and then get it over with as quick as possible. Saying goodbye to Kylie and not knowing when we’d be in the same breathing space again was too hard. So I did all the awkward things to avoid crying like a sooky la la and hugged her like million bucks she is. Kyles is smart, she knew to rip it off like a band aid and headed to work before the water works started. Some people are worth tears and she’s one of them.

After a good blubber, my pile of crap upstairs awaited and it wasn’t going to pack itself. I’m not proud to say the only things I didn’t wear was my exercise gear and sneakers. That’s probs obvious from my bloated gin belly and jeans that seem to have shrunk since I arrived. Somehow, I seem to have accumulated nearly two suitcases worth of gear, surprising since I only hit up H&M once. The final weight, 29.9kg, a .1 to spare. Mind you, pretty sure my back pack was about 20kg, plus a 10kg handbag. You’d think at this point, after all the money I spent on gin and crap food, I would have thought it worthwhile to spring for a taxi to the airport. Yeah nah, thought I was Wonder Woman and could lugg it all onto the tube, what’s the worse that can happen??

Hauling a suitcase, backpack and handbag onto a bus to Brixton Station was a bit of effort. Squishing onto the first tube to Greenpark, kinda awkward. Getting off the tube at Greenpark to find I had to get all my crap down three flights of stairs on account of a broken lift? For f*!k sake. There was sweat, grunting and expletives abound. I’m sure it was entertaining for the passerbys. If I didn’t have an extremely delicious bottle of Sloe gin in my case it might have been left at the bottom of the second flight of stairs. Or it would have at least gotten a swift kick to the bottom with a good luck and hope for the best. But anyways. I made it. My suitcase made it. My temper not so much.

Luckily once I was finally on the tube to Heathrow, a young girl with a normal sized case who had witnessed my staircase adventures stopped me from getting off at the wrong stop. If I didn’t stink from my recent exertions I would have hugged her.

Finally off the tube and in the Heathrow vicinity, the frickin long walk from the tube to Terminal 3 meant all that time i had put aside for duty free shopping was quickly slipping away.

Once at check in, if it wasn’t for my morning exertions that had resulted in a hell of a bad mood, I probs wouldn’t have bothered fighting for the window seat I’d booked. Bad mood Holly is a stubborn b**ch. After a call or two the lovely Emirates lady reallocated me to a window seat so I could get some zzzz’s. Wonder whether the crazed look on my face and sweat dripping down my forehead also had something to do with it. Subjecting other passengers to that wouldn’t be fair…

With a window seat secured to Dubai but no seat allocation for the 12 hours stint to Adelaide, I thought the battles were over but when my seat allocation came through for an aisle to Adelaide I was on a bloody mission and gave up duty fee gin just so I could curl up against a window and get some shut eye on the way home. After an hour of running around the airport and finally finding someone who could have helped, I had to give in and subject my neck to a world of torture napping in an aisle seat.

With morning dramas done and dusted, I shoveled a healthyish salad from Cafe Nero cos hell knows when I’d get anything with any nutritional value in the next 30 hours. Only one quick buy at duty free and onto the first 7 hour leg.

After my awkwardness at the goodbyes this morning, I was thankful to have 5 minutes to message my bestie and say all the things I suck at saying in person.

Somehow the stars then aligned and I had the row to myself. Maybe all that staircase drama that resulted in my bad mood was worth it, it did result in a stubborn Holly that got a window seat and whole row… or the people that were meant to sit there saw and smelt me and requested a move…

Having decided this was the leg to get some sleep, pills were popped and I waited. Think I’m sleeping pill resistant. Bugger.

Landing in Dubai at 12.50am, next flight boarding at 1.40am it was tighter than I would have liked but it’s just a change of gate right?!? Nah uh. No idea what the hell is going on at Dubai airport but for some reason, we had to go through security once off the plane before we could get to the next gate. Then at the gate, another bag check where not even the over priced bottle of water i managed to buy in my run between gates was allowed on board. Still being stubborn as hell I skulled the whole bottle of water rather than throw it out, for the price I paid, I was convinced it was the tears of unicorns.

Settled into my aisle seat and ready to consume unlimited coffee to stay awake rather than risk the neck ache of the century from sleeping upright, a smiling Emirates angel came over to ask a favour. Would I mind switching with a minor so she could get all the younguns in one row. Oh, and I’d have to switch a window seat. I literally moved at the speed of lightning. It wasn’t until I was settled in and the couple next to me were all cuddly and cozy that the bottle of water I skulled hit. Sometimes my stubbornness doesn’t pay off.

Having curled up against the window and had a decent sleep, being on Australian soil again felt good. Also not having pneumonia and being taken to hospital like last time was a welcome relief. Managing to snag some gin in duty free and head through customs, awaiting me on the other side were the smiling faces of my Mum and Dad. Always the two that will go out of their way for their little girl. Damn I’m lucky. Getting home and finding my mum had stocked my fridge with bacon, eggs and avo elevated my appreciation of the best parents in the world. While there are a million adventures to be had overseas, no other place in the world will ever be home. Home is with the people I love the most. What a sooky la la…

Anyway… most normal people when they get home just shower and bed. I’m one of those psychopaths that HAS to unpack. Yeah, I’m a special kind of weird. Or maybe I just didn’t want one of the best trips of my life to ever end and to have to return to reality. Probs the later.

But I guess the adventure is never really over. There’s still a whole big world out there to explore, who knows when I’ll embark on the next or who with but one things for sure, the travel bug is lit and when $$ and time next permits, I’ll be off!

Tuesday 22nd January 2019.

Holly vs the world

Category

Going, going, gone…

K, bye! 2.0