Tomorrow, I get on an international plane for the first time in ten years to go to a country I have never been to, to live and work. My boyfriend took himself and his cuddles to the other side of the world courtesy of a promotion and a relocation. I have never wanted time to pass faster than the last few months without him, but now that I am staring at this move right in the face (it’s TOMORROW), I’m desperately trying to figure out how to stretch what little time I have left with Sydney.
I am equal parts terrified and excited. I have not second guessed this decision for all the uncertainty in the world, because I have decided I am not going to start making decisions based on fear. I am stoked and excited to peek out the plane window, for plane food, and to get that embarrassing little fear in the air that I’m going to go down in flames or my plane is going to go missing because of my lack of experience flying. I’m even more excited to touch down on foreign soil and walk through the terminal knowing my boyfriend starts becoming a REAL PHYSICAL ENTRY, instead of this disembodied exchange of pixels and words that these last few months have been. I cannot even begin to explain my excitement for cuddles, huge organic supermarkets, living in the same country as one of my closest friends Doris, dumpling festivals, flea markets, seeing snow for the first time, exploring the city alone. Most of all, I’m excited for the promise of all the grit and joy and discovery that lays ahead.
But this blog post is about what I’m going to miss. So:
1. My apartment. If you follow me on Instagram, I’m sure you have an idea of the amount of time I spend on my roof top. I am fifty shades darker than when I lived with my parents, and staring starry eyed into an unblemished skyline has done things to me. I’m going to miss my house mate – Gumtree has never looked more ideal for making friends because if everyone is the same calibre as my house mate, I may as well give up on real life social interaction and dedicate myself to a life of Gumtree play dates. My first sojourn from the nest has finally felt like home, and now I’m leaving. Living alone has also meant copious amounts of time spent being aggressively nude which will be a great luxury I am sad to pass up.
2. My family. Obviously. The distance that moving out has provided me has brought my mum and I closer, and it scares me greatly that I will no longer be able to return home and leave with three weeks worth of home-made Asian food. This kind of relieves me though, thinking of all the carbicides I can now avoid.
3. My friends. My high school friends who will be studying their astronomically complicated degrees for a few more years, my food-snapping blogger friends living in an alternative universe where Stella McCartney boots are always a good idea, my gym buddies and my girlfriends. I’m going to make new friends (god willing), but what if I want to go on a massive Asian clubbing bender preluded by a Korean BBQ joint? What if I want to have an Instagrammable breakfast without the fear of being humiliated for standing up and taking photos, instead of being united in camera phone solidarity?
The last few days in particular have driven this point home. Having sleepovers and last group dinners at charcoal chicken restaurants, drinking beer on the roof. I have such an amazing group of friends and I feel as though it’s not the moving away, it’s coming to terms with the fact that we’re all growing up now. I realised that some of my friends I’ve now known for 10 years. That’s half of my brief little life.
4. My co-workers. I’ve started my real ‘big girl’ job this year, and I’ve only been at IMPACT Communications for a mere five months, but the girls at my work place have made the transition into the 9-5 grind such a pleasure. From criminally good vegan cakes to strange in-jokes about my inability to process language, and the whole office’s obsession with Game of Thrones (to the point where our weekly merit award is a toy Khaleesi), I’ll miss it all.
A lot has happened this year. It’s been a very, very good year and I have no doubts that the next will be equally, if not more amazing. I’ll probably be tweeting and Instagramming all my discoveries (expect A LOT of plane excitement) until I can train my boyfriend to take decent outfit photos for me. Now I’m going to scrape up what’s left of my dwindled wardrobe and schlep it to the other side of the world.
