the resurrection of my dying dreams

It’s an Autumn night in 2020. At first I begin to hear the tapping of raindrops on the roof, now they’ve become so frequent that it has morphed into a constant white noise. It has been a while since I shared the company of a friend that didn’t end in clicking the red hang up button and I am feeling the missing presence of the people I love. I scroll through the photos on my phone, laying in my sheets that were due to be changed a week or two ago, reminding my eyes of all the things I’ve seen, all the things I’ve done. There’s a little part of me that worries I’ll forget if I don’t stay connected to it, so I make a regular habit of doing this, of nurturing but also torturing my mind with the beautiful past. Every time I rewatch the videos, every time I let myself fall back in time by scrolling through moments of times before, I am remembering, I am keeping the fire alight, even if only just. They are a little thing I carry with me everywhere I go. Phone, wallet, keys, memories. They feel essential to me. “Oh we get it, you’ve travelled” they’d say, rolling their eyes at me, never understanding the significance belonging somewhere else in the world has on an individual, on their sense of identity. I see others who walked the same roads as me, moving forward, letting go of those days and I wonder, how? How can you let go of the magic like that? Did it not creep under your skin and make a home there? What have you found in the present that makes you comfortable walking away from the past? Will I ever find it too? My head folds into my chest and my knees meet my abdomen as I crunch into myself, feeling the throb in my core. Will life ever be beautiful like that again? Will I ever get to be her again?

Life moves, in weird ways and from that evening, life moved. Laughter that didn’t come from my lungs floated in the air around me again and I remembered how good it felt to sit in that. I did find myself regularly laying between my sheets in a dark room, reliving moments from the past through the bright screen of my phone, except now, there were things outside of that place that I was able to enjoy again, things I needed to enjoy again. Internally, I was grieving, grieving a life I had planned for myself while simultaneously watching every single human around me grieving something too; a holiday, a new business, a wedding, a relationship, a life. Everyone had their own story of loss, mine was no more significant. I think there is a form of closeness that we only ever experience with others while we grieve the same thing together, it is the silver lining of farewelling something, someone. There is magic in it, everyone falling into vulnerability together, everyone taking turns to be the strong one, the weak one, the numb one. When we were all grieving different things together, it was a complex place to be. We all had a story to tell, we all had stories to hear and I told mine, to whoever would listen at whatever opportunity I got, yet no matter how many times I said the words out loud, the load of it never got lighter. Unfortunately, talking about the wonderful life I had planned, the one that was slipping through my fingers as the days went on, didn’t open the borders to my dreams. No matter how many hours I spent scrolling, it didn’t take me back. No matter how many “flashback” photos I posted on instagram, I would still lift my head and be metaphorically and physically in a place I didn’t want to be. I’d try to disregard the way I felt because I’d hear stories that seemed harder to swallow than my own or I’d see people around the world struggling in ways I couldn’t comprehend but sadly, contrasting my pain with worse pain that others were carrying didn’t work either. It followed me around. Phone, wallet, keys, memories, grief.

The new normal had begun. People were finding new ways to enjoy themselves. Money that was saved for things that could no longer happen was eventually passed onto new dreams. Some were creating a new sense of security by buying first homes, others finding happiness in getting that new puppy they’d always talked about or that kitchen renovation since baking had become a regular thing for everyone now (shoutout to the banana bread days). Small businesses bloomed from the creative minds that were able to be watered in the walls of lockdown. People were finding new meaning to their existence, redirecting their paths and it was just wonderful. It was a slap of hope that we all needed. During this time, I began to correlate life with the seasons. We’d just had the coldest winter recorded, depression, uncertainty, anxiety, pain. The world as we knew it had changed forever but what comes after winter? The inevitable bloom. I felt so inspired by all of the things growing around me yet when I looked down at the roots of myself, I had not bloomed, not even the slightest. It almost felt as if I was beginning to wilt. The local nursery is filled with plants that have cardboard care instructions forked into the dirt. Some thrive inside with barely any sunlight, others need to be watered everyday with maximum sunshine exposure to survive. I was, like the many I have attempted to keep alive and failed to- a plant expected to thrive in an environment it was not built for. This soil was not mine. It was time to change something, it was time to rip the roots out and plant myself somewhere new, nourish my mind, grow, bloom and remind myself what it feels like to be excited for the future, for life. With the uncertainty of state border closures and the excruciating fear of not being able to hug my mum when I needed to, I chose Sydney.

This chapter was a thrilling experience. At first I didn’t know my way around the streets but I very quickly could navigate myself from A to B with ease. I love that part, creating a new comfort zone in a place that doesn’t feel like home. Life was again, filled with new faces, new places and new adventures. I remembered how alive I felt wandering new streets for the first time, capturing moments in photos, eating at different cafes and hearing stories from people who went from being strangers to friends. Was this the light at the end of the tunnel I’d spent a long time begging for? No, but it was a light to walk me through the dark until I finally got there. Instead of conversations in a hostel with foreign travellers somewhere in South America, it was hearing about my Indian Uber drivers life as he drove me from Paddington to Bondi. It didn’t ignite the flames, but it kept the embers burning (I have heard some incredible stories about different walks of life by doing this). One day, half way to my destination, after telling me about his life, my Uber driver asked about mine with genuine interest. Instead of putting my guard up or pretending there wasn’t much to tell, I told him about the loss of my dreams. I told him my desires to write, beautiful things, meaningful things and how I worried if I never got the opportunity to travel like I used to, that the fire would go out. I told him how it felt like the things I desired were out of my reach for along as I could see. He gave me hope. Hope I’d been handed plenty of times before yet dismissed as dishonest reassurance. “I can see that you have the passion, I can see that you will do that”. It wasn’t the first time someone told me my dreams were within my reach and like all the other times, I ignored it, knowing the path I wanted was closed for maintenance. I thanked him for the conversation, stepped out of the car into the dusk of the city evening for another night of drinking my pay check in search of thrilling memories, stories to tell, stories that might feel like the old ones used to.

Life again, moved in lots of ways. There were several times I’d finally see that god damn light at the end of the tunnel, only to be almost instantly pulled back into the depths of it. It felt like a constant battle of finally getting back up to be knocked down again. A constant battle of persevering, putting my foot in front of the other towards something I didn’t even know existed. Everything was uncertain, plans would fall through for things out of my control and before I knew it, lockdown began again. It was months of uncertainty, again, that I eventually forgot to remind myself of the past. I became so focussed on the present and what was happening there and then, I didn’t really have a choice. It was on my phone, whatever platform I scrolled on. It was the only thing on TV. It was the only thing on everyones lips. There wasn’t room for other things. So my memories cut a hole in my pocket and slipped away. Phone, wallet, keys, grief, lockdown. Mark Manson wrote in his award winning book “Everything Is Fucked” about the concept of hope and how we need it to thrive, how we need it to survive. Hope really does drive everything and I thought about that a lot. How hard it was to find hope of not only a better future but a future that had my name written on it and so I, like most people, lived in a limbo state, with an unknown future ahead, a past that was gone and a present that wasn’t a nice place to be.

The pattern in this story is that life moves. I always seem to forget this when things seem so stale but it does. It’s a lesson I’ve retained from the last few years. Things change, people move on, paths cross, paths divert and sometimes paths you thought were gone forever, gradually appear again through the fog. I moved home from Sydney after experiencing heart complications and was reminded there really is no healing power like the one that lies within the arms of your mother. I was back in my old bedroom, the one I’d spent nights trying to water a soil where no seed existed. Lockdowns lifted, friends came together again and I was trying to find a place to ground my feet that gave me a sense of belonging and in doing this, I finally reached a state of acceptance. A state I was subconsciously trying to avoid for 2 years because accepting this as my life felt as if I was letting go of the life I wanted. I realised if I wanted to be truly happy, I needed to start being happy here, in the right now, instead of waiting for things to move, they do move, I’d learnt that. I started focusing on the people who made me feel happy, spending time doing the things that felt good. I fell in love with our new puppy, spent time with my family, built a stronger relationship with my parents who really are the best friends I’ve ever had and overall just enjoyed where I was, in the right now. I finally let the embers of my old dreams sleep and then, it happened. On the 21st of February 2022, Australia was opening it’s borders and I wasted no time in booking my one way ticket to the other side of the world.

Homesickness is something I’ve experienced a lot of. Homesick for home, homesick for places that became home, homesick for wherever I am not. The first emotion that engulfed me after clicking “buy” on that flight, the flight I’d spent 2 years wishing for, was to my surprise, not excitement, it was a feeling quite similar to my old friend homesickness. I thought of all the wonderful things I had here, in the now. All of the wonderful things I had made myself to enjoy in the meantime. I questioned myself, doubted myself and felt anger towards myself. This is why I didn’t want to enjoy the right now, through fear of losing the passion for the dreams I put on hold. How will I leave when this place, my family home, has become my safety net in the most uncertain of times? How will I face pain without the comfort of my childhood bedroom, without the warmth of my mothers arms?

A surprising concept I read about not long ago is the idea that humans are generally more afraid of success than failure. Success feels like doors opening and to take advantage of it, it requires action from us. Failure feels like doors closing and allows us to stay inside our comfort zone a little while longer. It’s a lot easier to sit there and talk about how great all these ideas would be then it is to actually execute them in our lives. I realised for me, it was a lot easier to wallow in self pity and day dream about the life I wanted to be living than to actually move across the world and do it. In my daydreaming, I never had to experience the pain of saying goodbye to the people I love. I could be in two places at once, here physically and there mentally. I worried about how hard it would be to reignite the flames to give me the courage again, the courage I had before all of this, to just do it.

I realised I was no longer her anymore, in fact it had been 2 years since I had been her. I had, like life, moved, grown, in ways I wouldn’t have if I was solely focussed on collecting sparkly memories, solely focussed on experiencing life only in its most beautiful forms. I realised there were parts of me I found in the nights I fell asleep in foetal position, some ugly, some beautiful, some parts that had been so quiet I’d forgotten about them. I looked in, instead of out. An emotion I always welcome began to rush through my veins, gratefulness. I was grateful for the lessons I learnt in the darkness of the tunnel, the relationships I was able to nurture in the time I was gifted. Gifted. I realised I was stronger now than I had ever been and was filled with copious amounts of wisdom I never would have even fathomed I’d posses and then, I felt the flames again, turns out that Uber driver was right.

As I write this, it is 62 days until the world is mine again, the way I wanted it to be. 62 days until I step onto that plane into an adventure I cannot yet even understand. 62 days until I reunite with the old me and introduce her to the new me. What will life be like when the two of us meet?

If you read my blogs and enjoy them, please do reach out and send your love, it is always appreciated. - Holly