wow, how many time travels can you fit into a day? Just yesterday, I was originally looking for an old passport, I stumbled into my VERY old diaries which I wrote when I was first in Australia in 1996 (for 6 months) and then again in 1999 (for 6 weeks). That´s 14 years old. Meaning: I am officially old.Anyways, I started reading it last night, I almost made it through the first 4 months in one session (until my eyes started to hurt) and I mean I wrote something EVERY day. So there I was, lying in bed with my boy-friend who I was madly in love with back then. Feeling guilty because I still had the other boy-friend back in Germany, feeling swept back and forth between missing the one and not wanting to leave the other... what a drama at the age of 16! I guess it still would be one today. But reading now how I was even ashamed to write about my feelings TO MYSELF into my diary is kinda cute. and naive. and long time ago. but still, it was me who wrote that and I remember most of what I wrote down then and a lot of feelings come back in an instant, the loneliness, the cofusion, the joy, the outburst of pain and homesickness, the crazy falling in love with a guy who I´d probably never see again in my life but would have married right away if there had been a chance (that was his mum´s suggestion by the way!).
So from last night on, I have been re-living (in portions) my journey I made back then, my troubles to find friends at school, to fit into my host family in which I never really felt home as much as I hoped I would, to literally understand something (you think you learned English in school, just to find out, ha, you just don´t get anything!), to NOT fall in love, to break up again and again (always with the intention to 'just be friends'), only to get back together and falling into it deeper than before... When I got to the part where I said goodbye to my down-under boy-friend, I had almost tears coming to my eyes, I felt a fraction of that unbelievable sadness again, that very physical pain of having to leave him knowing I won´t be able to see him or touch him for years or maybe forever. And then finally breaking up with my boy-friend in Germany because I just couldn´t go back to 'normal' after I returned home home. I wrote a lot about how it was an adventure to live in Australia for this time and I feel a little bit of that vibe coming up again only by thinking about applying for a visa... like when I yesterday went to request a new passport. I was so excited and somehow irritated that the clerk I was talking to didn´t notice that, I actually had to tell myself that of course he DOESN´T know that I am getting the passport to apply for visa for Australia. as if the whole world had to be turning around MY future travel plans. well, I guess it does for me.
so as soon as I returned to Germany in 96 (in my reading), I picked up the sequel and flew back to Australia in 99, only to find out that after a short revival of my love affair he started to absolutely ignore me, stopped talking to me completely and left me on parties in the middle of the night so I had to be rescued by some of his friends to be able to spend the night at their place. Literally the one night (that´s like the 5th night of my stay), we had the talk again about maybe we could marry so I am able stay, and the next day we didn´t talk anymore at all. It must have been the toughest thing I had been through in that respect. I had flown around the world to see the man I was once willing to marry (even if it was a naive dream but still, being with him meant so much to me) and now he abandoned me. I could rely on his mum and sister to talk to, but I didn´t wanna marry them then, did I.
So the 2nd visit down under turned out to be different to the first one but yet similar in its exerience: A lot of drama, heartache, happy reunions, being unnerved by the same things (like my host mum yelling), feeling welcome in one part of the family and not so much in the other... But of course I was different then. When I was there in 1996 I was deeply in my anorexic phase and a lot of my feelings and perceptions were covered by that issue. In 1999, I was rather the opposite and binged on food, but I was much more in contact with my feelings. So having the direct comparison, it felt like a veil had been lifted. And that was an interesting thing to experience. How much my whole outlook had changed.
And that is what I am looking forward to experiencing when I will go back (hopefully) next year: If I have a (more or less) clear vision by now. I think now that I do but how will it feel when I actually look at my life upside-down again?
I don´t worry at all about meeting my ex-boyfriend again (although I am tempted to write to him) or my host family, it is more a feeling of there is this place I need to go in order to find out where I am and where I want to be. As if I had to go to the place the farthest away from where I am right now to either come back full circle or see from an adequate distance where I need to go next. Or where I want to stay. Or where I DON´T want to stay. Who I am.
Maybe I still have an exaggerated naive picture of Australia as a magical continent, maybe it´s stupid to believe (again) I might find any answers down there. But I just know I have to go to find out. Like in that very yogic principle you have to go off track to the point where you can´t go any further to then complete your journey (or at least that one) on your way back describing an 'O'-shaped figure. Meaning 'zero', meaning 'shuniya', meaning the bliss of emptiness, meaning the completeness and beauty and fullness of 'nothing'. Stillness. Sat Nam.
source of image
picture taken by marragem
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