reclaiming

After two (magical and difficult, love-filled and lonely) years in Melbourne, I’ve moved quite suddenly. It came to me in the first week of December. In a flash, I felt that I had to leave. The thought turned more concrete, and I said: I think I have to leave.

And so I did.

Now I’m in Taipei – in my parents’ home, surrounded by cats and warmth. Feeling very far and very close to that pivotal moment. Which had been brewing within me for weeks, maybe months, before it happened. Unbeknownst to my thinking mind.

I felt a faint stirring inside when I thought of visiting my friends in New York, who I haven’t seen in over two years, of my grandparents in Florida – so very far from Melbourne’s windy shores – and of more colorful places, places like Mexico.

Though I still spent two days afterwards holed up in my room, in tears, making phone calls, journaling, listing out my life, wondering, scaring the shit out of myself, and hoping, hoping, hoping – I actually knew it was going to happen from that exact moment.

The timeline had split. It was time to go.

Looking back at the last few months in Melbourne, the sensation that comes to mind is swimming against the current: trying to make it work physically and astrally. Trying for a harmonious relationship, trying for new opportunities that weren’t coming, trying to grow my roots into hard ground.

Moving to a new city and country without existing support systems, you learn that you need to try in order to get anything done. But the universe was letting me know, less than gently, that what I was trying for was simply not meant to be mine.

Still, there was joy in Melbourne. The friendships, the bike rides, the festivals, the electric blue skies, the Merri Creek. I feel proud and heart-warmed when I think of the yoga taught, the relationship cultivated, and the home created in a place so far from everywhere else.

That feeling of foreign-ness – of being in Australia and realizing the moon looks different because you are in the Southern Hemisphere, because everything is different there, and quite strange, too – subsided for a while.

You start to learn slang words and remember street names. I found the joy of biking around everywhere, the joy of seeing familiar faces on the street, and the joy of coming back to my own soft sheets.

It felt like such a relief after traveling for an extended period, and before that, living in busy New York, that all my energy went into making a home there, and staying: not only looking for work and visas, but mentally and physically preparing to make Melbourne home, forever.

With a little more space now, I see that I needed the relief and release into stillness and stability. I needed to slow down, to stop the constant intake of stimuli, for things to arise that desperately needed some love and awareness.

In Melbourne I nested, so that I could heal: sometimes slowly, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes with all my might. I learned the vocabulary of trauma. I learned to really live on my own. I learned to embrace my own femininity.

And now that I have left, I see that those things have less to do with the place itself, and all the more to do with healing.

I had to let go of a bit of my wildness in order to heal. In that period, I shrank, too, avoiding certain connections and being seen. Now there is a feel of reclamation – that I can be healed and a little bit wild, too.

So I am going to Mexico. Shifting hemispheres. Seeing old friends. Refocusing. Reclaiming. From a place of gratitude, not escaping.

From the known back into the unknown.

Going forward, I’m going to have a lot more time for this space, for my writing, and creative pursuits. I’m ready to interact again with the universe and weave something new.

So let’s keep in touch,

Jasmine.

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