Settling down

Monday. I’m sitting on my balcony watching the alien hibiscus flowers multiply, intoxicated by the feeling of sun on my skin. I remember three years ago when the East Coast was in drought. Every day was sunny and bright and all I wanted was to see the rain. Today I have a deep appreciation for the moist soil, the rich green of the plants and the pools of water for the birds to drink from. Today, when the sun shines I’m in heaven. I can feel my body smiling. A black cockatoo cries somewhere to the east. Another storm is coming. 

I’ve been here for exactly two years now. Here, in the same house. I haven't stayed anywhere for that long since I left the house I was born in. I’ve got to know the country through the seasons. I’ve watched the maple tree in my backyard go through two full cycles. Bright green buds to wide leaves, turning to orange, then deep red before falling to the earth.

The maple shows me how to let go with grace. She reminds me not to get attached to summer. She teaches me to love the winter and honour my own need to rest. She reminds me how beautiful it is to be stripped bare. To let it all go. She tells me its the only way to begin again.

I’ve walked the beach in all the seasons. I’ve seen the creek glow like amber under the light of a winter sun. I’ve watched it reduce to a trickle, then fill up and break it’s sand banks, carving a serpentine passage to the ocean. I’ve seen the beach covered with foam. I’ve seen storms create cliffs of sand, only for them to be evened out by the wind days later. I’ve seen the ocean turned brown and then clean herself back to exquisite blue as the sky is mirrored in her depths.

I feel a sense of place. I belong here. 

For the first time in my life my feet aren’t itchy. Not even a little bit. I’ve grown roots in my old age. I’m embedded. Who would have guessed I’d finally stay still.

Rewind 12 years. August 2010. I’m sitting at Heathrow airport crying into my little Nokia phone. I’m speaking to a boyfriend I'm not quite ready to let go. I’m clinging to him like a comfort blanket as I say goodbye to everything and everyone I’ve ever known. A couple weeks earlier, driven by some strange force, I impulsively booked a one way flight to Bangkok, ended the lease on my house, said goodbye to my family and friends, quit my job and let it all burn. 

People say I’m brave. I wasn’t always this way. It didn’t come naturally. I think bravery is learned through making mistakes, falling over and getting back up again a little bit stronger each time. Leaving England was scary. But what I was really scared of was suffocating in a life that wasn’t mine. 

Back to the airport. My boyfriend says don’t go. I hang up the phone. My feet are carrying me. I look down and watch them move, one after the other after the other. Across the runway. Onto the cramped plane. Into the void. All around me groups of friends and families with young children shouting and laughing. And me. 25 years old with so many lives already lived. Feeling worn out and spat out by the world, and more than anything so grateful because my life which I thought was over has been revived. 

The plane took off and eventually I landed, smelly and disheveled into an exotic place as different to the tiny grey isle as it gets. I picked up my bags and started to navigate this new world. Transport, currency, language, customs. The smell of sweet basil and fish sauce. Unknown fruits and loud Thai pop music blaring from the ceiling. My heart started to swell. Freedom started in my toes and rushed up to my head. I was completely anonymous. No one knew me. No one knew my story. I could be whoever I wanted to be. I was free.

I got in a taxi and told the driver ‘Ko Sahn Road, please. I mean Sawadeeka’. I sat in the back, clutching a battered Lonely Planet guide in my sweaty hand. Damn it was hot. There were no rules on the roads. No one obeyed the traffic lights or the lanes. I loved the chaos. I had no idea where I was going, but I was reading ‘The Beach’ and I'd even watched half the movie which of course isn’t as good, but stars Leonardo DiCaprio so has some merit. I figured my travels would be similar. I’d meet a beautiful French couple, fall in love with a boy, discover a secret island and live there for the rest of my short life. In the story the paradise quickly turns to hell as greed, jealousy and anger overtake the island inhabitants but I hadn't read that far yet. 
 

So whatever. Island paradise here we come. Or not. 

The taxi dropped me unceremoniously on the side of the road. I walked around listlessly. I felt sweaty and heavy and disorientated from the flight. I saw groups of friends laughing in bars and thought I could go and sit down with them but how do I do that, what would I even say?

I was dismayed to realise that I’d travelled half way around the world and I was still me. All my insecurities, shyness, awkwardness and self doubt had come along for the ride. I thought ‘going travelling’ would magically transform me into the person I’d always wanted to be. Confident and poised. Perfect hair, perfect clothes and perfect teeth. The life and soul of every party.

It took me over a week to get the courage to speak to anyone. Every day I'd say to myself 'todays the day I make friends!'. Then evening would roll around again and I'd be walking around by myself again.  I’d call my boyfriend and again he’d convince me to come home and I nearly did a thousand times but that unseen force kept whispering in the dark 'you only walk forward, never back'.

What I did instead, thank God, is get out  of the backpacker Mecca where everyone seemed the same as back home, drinking in bars and trying to impress each other. I went to the local bus station where everyone was local and no-one spoke English. I wanted to go to the mountains. I  pointed to the north and jumped on a random bus. I couldn’t read any of the signs, of course they were all in Thai so I just stared at the hypnotic curls of the strange letters, held my breath and dived in.

The bus whipped and winded through the chaotic roads for 8 hours before dumping me at Khon Kaen. This was the real Thailand. No tourists. No English speakers. I got by with my little translation book, extremely bad Thai and a lot of hand gestures. I’d walk down the street and the local people would stop and stare. They’d wake their children up to look at me. I’d wave and smile. This was where it all began. The start of years of travel. The start of my own initiation.