“Cause getting your dreams
It’s strange, but it seems
A little — well — complicated
There’s a kind of a sort of…cost
There’s a couple of things get…lost
There are bridges you cross
You didn’t know you crossed
Until you’ve crossed.”
-Thank Goodness

My parents are worried about me.

I think they should be.
I’m worried about me too.

The jeans I bought that were a perfect snug fit just over 2 weeks ago, can now be taken off without unbuttoning them.
A dress I had taken in before I left, now looks exactly the way it did before any alterations were made.
I’m tired.
Sometimes I find myself feeling a bit dizzy.

The fact of the matter is: I’m not eating enough food and it’s not okay.

I’m not intentionally starving myself, trying to meet some “goal weight” ideal. I am just so stressed out about what is going on.

Where am I going to live once this current situation is over?
What can I afford?
When will I get a job with a sustainable amount of income so that I can know what I can afford?
It’s so expensive here and I only have so much left.

I feel like I’ve been bathing in a sea of uncertainty since the day I got here and that sea sloshes around my stomach as waves of cortisol that do to my appetite what Game of Thrones does to likable characters.  One of my friends just got her MA in Clinical Psychology and has undergone intensive bouts of treatment for her own eating disorder and she’s expressed some concern as well that I am in, what looks to be, a pattern of disordered eating that could easily slip into an ED. I certainly fit quite a few of the personality trait markers. Thankfully, I am super self aware and trying to get in front of it before things go to a Lifetime movie place.

But it is difficult. This is the unhealthiest I have ever been (in memory) and even though I know that and know how important it is to be good to my one and only body, I still can’t make myself hungry. It still is a struggle to eat more than 2 meals a day. And I’m sure the fact that food costs money–a lot of money here (hello $3 for 3 bananas!)–and money is one of the things I am stressing about isn’t helping.
On a superficial note, I look great, which I think makes me downplay how bad this behavior truly is.

I keep thinking that once things settle, once I have a place and a steady job, I will feel like I’m not holding my breath as I have been for the past 2 1/2 months, then everything will return to normal and this will be the part of the story that I gloss over in the retelling, like my first my first few weeks in Van when I was sad, homesick and friendless, having to talk myself out of going home.

But since I don’t know when that is going to be, I am making sure to talk about it and keep myself accountable.

“Leaving is not enough. You must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. Don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. Don’t lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid. You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.”
-Frida Kahlo (emphasis added)

I am not a stupid girl.
I am in the kitchen and I am watching my pot.

I’m hoping that sadness is my failing memory and not an accurate snapshot of an undervalued life.

It was delicious!

The thing about this trip is that it’s a lot bigger than it seems. Coming here has been the single most important, greatest, constant driving force in my life. And I can’t process, can’t find the words to convey, what it feels like to be standing here right now…except to say, if you have a dream, go for it. Even if you don’t understand it, even if it seems, big and faraway and impossible, even if you wonder why you can’t just be a normal person, even if it scares the shit out of you (especially then), even if you spend all your money, even if it takes SEVEN YEARS–it’s worth it. It’s worth it to know that you truly lived this life, that you fought for things worth fighting for.

Like dreams.

Because the Bridge and the Opera House? They started as sketches.
And before that they were just ideas.

I thought that coming here would just be that for me: an idea. I was so scared of so many things. And I still have my worries and doubts–I have no idea what will happen tomorrow–but, if I’ve learned anything from this journey, it’s that “courage is not the absence of fear, but rather, the judgement that something else is more important than fear.”

I know I was meant to come here. I don’t know if that means that things will “work out,” if I’ll stay 10 more months or 10 more years. But standing here, staring at the harbour, I know that I will never have to wonder. I will never have to be someone who talked about something, but didn’t (at least try to) make it happen. I will know that no matter how things turn out, I am better for the impact of everything I’ve done to get here.

And that, is HUGE.

Today was my last day here and it rained nonstop. I think the city is inconsolable that I am leaving.

It’s bittersweet for me too.

Even though I have always known that my “real” destination was Sydney, there is still something special about the first place that you call home when you venture into something new and unknown.

This is the city that introduced me to Australia, one that I immediately felt comfortable in and for which my affinity only grew stronger and stronger as time went on. I like it here. It’s cool and charming and, perhaps, the most interesting place that I have lived (of LA, DC, Miami, Vancouver).

I will miss this city.

I will miss…

• the 19, 78, 79, 96, 86
• the Bourke Street Mall
• the Sandringham and Upfield lines
• the laneways
• the street art
  
  
  
  
• Spelt Quinoa
• Rathdowne Village (particularly Tre Bicchiere with their flourless tortinas and No Doubt and Black Ruby with the best GF bread ever)
• The toilets at Flinders
  
  
  
• Back of Chapel
• Fed Square
  
• Southbank
  
• My flat (that used to be a brothel! A fact that you would think meant the walls would be better soundproofed.)
  
• The Prahran Market
• The American store on Greville with the proprietor who told me that I shouldn’t go to Sydney because I couldn’t get Flamin’ Hot Cheetos there before giving me some free Tootsie Pops. I told him that was the single best argument I’d heard as why I should stay.
• Sunsets at St. Kilda
  

And of course all of the lovely people I’ve met who I couldn’t even begin to list without fear of forgetting someone.

Oh Melbs.

I am so excited to get north and answer the Sydney question in my mind, but I am sad that there are ways in which I didn’t fully engage with this city: subconsciously, because I knew I was leaving and consciously, because I kept thinking, “Well, I’ll do [insert cool, interesting thing] when I have a job.” I wish that part could have gone differently. I know that I have only just scratched the surface of what is on offer.

The tourism campaign here is the Land of In-Between, owing to Melbourne’s beneath the surface allure, and I guess that is what it has been for me: a bridge between LA and Sydney. A place to discover hidden things, both about the city and myself.

It’s ironic that I want this traveling lifestyle when I attach so easily to people and places. I wear my heart on my passport.
Maybe it’s not that I want it. Maybe it’s it that wants me.

I don’t know.

It’s late and I have a long drive ahead of me tomorrow.

So long, Melbourne, and thanks for all the fish.

A study on the effects of human body odor as pitted against the will to survive.