Everything Goes

So. I am returning to the United States, after more than three years away. I don’t see it as a proper “return,” because I don’t have a plan to stay longterm. I’m thinking of it more like a visit. And yet, I am…terrified? That may be a little strong (or maybe not), but I am definitely experiencing a significant amount of resistance and dread and apprehension. I’ve written before about the recurring nightmare I had while I was in New Zealand (realizing I was on a plane to leave New Zealand, or that I had actually left and landed in the United States, and being unable to do anything about it), and even though I left New Zealand in late January, and even though I don’t have that nightmare anymore, the prospect of returning to the US leaves me cold. So why are you? you might be asking. 

Well, there’s the part of me that feels like the world’s worst daughter, considering that I am an only child and my parents haven’t seen me since I left the US in July 2019. (“My daughter went to Europe and never came back!” I imagine my mother saying to friends and acquaintances.) I feel a terrible heavy guilt when I think about them making their way through yet another childless holiday season, particularly my mother, who has a tender heart (much like her daughter, even if she doesn’t realize that) and who feels more pain at my absence than she lets on. 

My relationship with my parents has had a lot of ups and downs, and while in my mind there’s no question that they both have more than two decades ahead of them (plenty of time to catch up, right?!), the more objective side of me remembers from experience that things can get turned upside down in a heartbeat. One minute you’re standing in line at CVS waiting to put in your refill request, your world feeling stable and steady and upright, and the next your mother is ringing you up to tell you she has cancer, and the ground beneath your feet is rolling and listing like the deck of a torpedoed ship.

And there are practical reasons for returning—doing something about that damn storage unit, which is filled with things that I don’t seem to be able to part with but which I also never think about; renewing my drivers license (back in 2019, I could not even conceive of the idea that my license, set to expire in August of 2022, would not outlast my travels); relieving my friend of being the recipient of all my mail; etc. 

And I want to see R, who returned to the US in April of this year. (I was so far from being able to even imagine returning back then that it wasn’t even a consideration for me.) While it was the right choice at the time, and while we have plenty of history of being in different places for long stretches of time, watching him be sucked away on the train to the airport while I stood alone on the Kings Cross train platform (as I watched him disappear, “mind the gap,” a phrase which is painted on every platform and repeated with irksome regularity over the announcement system, took on a new and more profound meaning for me) and then trudging back (again, alone) to our no-longer-shared Airbnb in Potts Point ranks as one of my most excruciating emotional experiences of the past decade. It took me months to even feel like I was at a baseline level of being a functional human being again (this is part of the reason for the extreme emotional puddling that I discussed in my last post).

We’d spent over two years traveling together—two years during a pandemic, for that matter—and the sudden physical absence was crushing. In the days leading up to his departure, and for weeks/months afterward, I felt like some sort of manic memory scavenger, trying to prevent all of our memories from the previous two plus years from being Eternal Sunshined. Watching Casablanca (always an emotionally fraught experience for me) on the flight from Australia to Bali, every line between Rick and Ilsa seemed tragically resonant with my own situation. We’ll always have New Zealand, I thought, as I sat sobbing in my seat.

So there are definitely reasons to return. 

But here’s something most people who have traveled continuously for so long can likely tell you: it’s easier than you think to let go of your home country. I didn’t think it would be. I didn’t expect that I would be homesick or anything, but I thought I’d still feel connected. I thought I’d still feel a pull, that the US would always be “home” to me. Instead, the exact opposite has happened. “Home” feels increasingly like this part of the world: New Zealand, Australia, Bali. Whenever I feel acutely aware of my foreigner status in Bali, it’s not the US I find comforting, it’s Australia.

Obviously I am a foreigner in Australia, too, and I’ve written before about how easy it is to look fondly on a place in which you’re privileged to be a visitor—of course things seem brighter and more carefree when you’re not paying taxes, or eyeballing interest rates, or trying to find a job, or any of the myriad other things you have to concern yourself with when you’re a citizen. 

At the same time, I don’t really feel like a tourist. I find it impossible to explain to people what it’s like to actually live in another country. When I talk to many of my friends and family, I get the sense that they think it’s a little bit like a really prolonged vacation, like I spend my time relaxing by a pool or chilling on a beach, sleeping in, generally living a life of leisure. Like I’m always eating out in restaurants and staying in hotels and generally looking out at the world from the insulated interior of some all-inclusive holiday package. Like I’m some itinerant Peter Pan, never really having to assume adult responsibilities or to worry too much about anything, constantly styling myself as a typical tourist, unconcerned with things like the government and local customs and the day-to-day hassles of everyday life.

When I was in New Zealand, my mother used to advise me to “talk to the embassy” about things like vaccination, which to me was a bafflingly absurd and ridiculously out-of-touch suggestion. Why would I need to contact the embassy for anything? Maybe if I were accused of a crime or if I lost my passport, but otherwise…I lived in New Zealand. I already knew what to do and where to go for things. I’d stood in line at AA (no, this is not Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s the Automobile Association, which is roughly equivalent to the DMV) to transfer into our ownership the car we’d bought, been on the phone with the Ministry of Health to make sure that we had our had our NHI numbers and our vaccine passports, made appointments with doctors and filled prescriptions, paid tickets and tolls and car registration renewal fees. I had an account with Spark (New Zealand’s largest mobile network) and a bonafide (i.e., not tourist SIM) New Zealand phone number, for goodness’ sake.

We may have traveled all over that country (South Island, North Island, southernmost point, northernmost point, east coasts, west coasts, mountains, beaches, glaciers, cities, countryside, wineries, port towns—you name it, we saw it), but it didn’t feel like your typical holiday tourism. We went to the grocery store for weekly shopping, we had library cards, we received mail. I knew the names of various government officials, I perused local newspapers, I understood the importance of pies and prawns and the Queen’s Birthday. I started using British spelling by default, I started to date things with the day first and the month second, I could say “kia ora” with the best of them. I could drive to and from multiple places in multiple areas of the country without a map, could identify many birds and plants native to New Zealand, could tell you how many kilometers it was between one city and another (though to be fair, when driving, I almost always converted kilometers to miles in my mind).

In Auckland, I knew all the baristas at the Coffix on K Road, because I was there almost every morning. When in Paihia, I was a regular at Third Wheel coffeeshop (to this day, one of my favorite coffeeshops ever, with the best cinnamon rolls). In some ways, I felt I knew New Zealand better than I ever knew the US. To this day, I’ll see an article from Stuff or RNZ or the Herald (all of which I still follow) with a picture accompanying it, and I can often identify where the picture was taken. 

Technically, I was a tourist, but apart from traveling from place to place, our lives were often pretty mundane. This is what I find hard to explain to people—what it’s like to live a normal, everyday life in a country that’s not your own. It was the same in Australia, and it’s the same here in Bali. It seems like it should be glamorous, and I suppose sometimes it is, but I’m not on holiday. I’m just living a life in much the same way as I would be if I were in the US. The backdrop may be more exotic, and the culture and the customs may be different, but my lifestyle isn’t dramatically different.

So. I’ve shared a little bit about why this part of the world may feel like home, but why does the US feel the opposite? Why don’t I feel more excited about returning? My mother constantly uses the phrase, “when you return to the US,” as though it’s some definitive and inevitable conclusion, as though this event will bring to a permanent halt my wayward, vagabond ways and I will root myself, once more, in a city and a house and a job with an office. As though all of this traveling has been a mere aberration, and now I can get back to the “real world” and “settle down” and resume a “normal life.” And this, this, is what I fear the most.

Sure, there are external reasons for my not feeling excited to return to the US—the handling of COVID has been atrocious (from my perspective), the political climate is legit insane, inflation is very real, mass shootings have become more normal than not, culture wars keep raging. There’s a raw ugliness there, and a sort of barely-contained madness simmering right beneath the surface that frightens and saddens me at the same time. The US doesn’t exactly feel like a beacon of light and hope in a dark and uncertain world, and I feel pretty pessimistic about the near-term future there.

But there are a lot of internal reasons for my resistance, too. For so much of my time in the US, my world felt claustrophobic and depressing. Growing up, I often felt stifled, geographically and emotionally. When I went away to college and to graduate school, it was like a cage door had been opened, and the freedom was intoxicating.

By the time I reached my mid-twenties, however, that same creeping sense of claustrophobia from my younger years had returned, and I had started to see my life as a long dark hall, with all the doors along it, which may once have opened onto excitement or opportunity, shut and bolted. The only door I could see that was open was the one at the far end. Is this it? I was constantly asking myself as I looked around at my life. House, car, marriage, job, wash, rinse, repeat. Same things, same people, same sameness. Tada. Life’s bleakest magic trick. 

I read Play It as It Lays and nodded along, feeling a true and powerful kinship with Maria Wyeth. It truly did not in any way occur to me that characters in this book exhibited thoughts and behaviors that were anything other than a perfectly rational and appropriate response to the world. These characters had been out there, where nothing is, and they knew. I felt like we shared the same secret, had tapped into the same stark and terrifying emptiness. “I know what nothing means, and keep on playing,” Maria says, and I felt like fist-pumping in solidarity.

I watched the first season of True Detective and practically leapt from the couch in excited recognition every time Rust Cohle opened his mouth. I was like that Leo DiCaprio meme from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood—you know, the one where his character, Rick Dalton, is pointing at the screen with one hand while a beer and a cigarette dangles from the other. How was it that my own exact words and thoughts were spilling from this fictional character’s mouth? What kind of strange dark magic was this? Whenever the show cut to Rust in the present day, all grizzled and grey, living in his little room behind a bar and drinking his way through the days, I feared I was getting a glimpse of my future.

Maybe this sounds melodramatic, as though I were reveling in the edginess of it all, like a disaffected kid who’s just read Catcher in the Rye for the first time and fancies himself the second coming of Holden Caulfield. But that was not what this was. This was not melodrama or teen-angst-in-my-twenties. I was genuinely disconnected, disengaged. Everything was dull and flat and desolate. No color, everything grey. I wasn’t anywhere close to being old enough for a mid-life crisis, and yet I already felt resigned to a life of quiet desperation, already felt like I was just marking time, waiting for the world to end.

When I met R in 2015, it marked a shift for me. Just knowing him helped me to open up to so much that I’d never really considered before, helped me to see that the world, and my place in it, could be bigger. Brighter. Better. I didn’t have to keep playing a smaller game. I had choices, options. To this day, I give him much credit for the direction my life has taken (or did I take it there?), and I truly believe I wouldn’t have done any of the traveling I’ve done over the past three plus years if I hadn’t met him. I’m not saying that he’s the sole reason for it all, but our connection has served as a catalyst that has opened me up to so much more possibility, in so many different arenas.

Traveling has expanded my world—literally and figuratively, externally and internally. Life feels so much more electric, so much more vivid, so much more three dimensional. There’s color. There’s charge. I know what’s out there, and it’s dazzling, dizzying. Obviously I’ve had emotional struggles along the way, so it’s not all wonder and take-your-breath-away moments. Yes, as discussed in multiple posts, I can feel dull and listless and anxious and devastated. I can grow dim, dark. But overall, I feel lighter and brighter and much happier when I’m traveling. I sparkle, I shine. I’m Marilyn Monroe at the Call Me Madam film premiere, all white hair, white dress, white gloves, white fur. All white hot electric.

Travel has also instilled in me a confidence that I can do more than I think I can. I don’t know that city-hopping without incident on the Frecce, or driving on the lefthand side of the road, or navigating the Athens Metro (or figuring out to get from Athens to Delphi, for that matter), or having a successful exchange in Indonesian is really all that impressive, as accomplishments go (well, the Athens to Delphi is, especially when it’s during a transport strike—this happens with such frequency that a day without a strike feels more unusual than a day with one—and you refuse to include any form of taxi in your plan), but I still get a little thrill out of such moments.

So one of the things that frightens me about returning to the US is the idea that my world will shrink, and that I might shrink with it. I cannot, cannot, go back to just existing. I feel like a shark, afraid that I’ll die if I stop moving. And I equate “stopping” with the US. That’s a choice, you might say. And to an extent, I agree. I don’t have to frame it this way. But it’s also true that there are a lot of circumstances in the US right now that don’t exactly support an optimistic or expansive worldview, and given my own issues with anxiety and general emotional sensitivity, I fear I may be particularly vulnerable to that dark energy.

I’ve also been thinking quite a bit recently about how things that once seemed so important can so easily (seemingly, anyway)…fade. It’s like my storage unit. As proud as I was of myself for donating or tossing so much when I sold my house, I still somehow managed to stuff that storage unit to the gills. What if I need this dress/that chair/that figurine later? I thought to myself. Marie Kondo would be appalled. It all seemed so important. But once I rattled that door down for the final time before I left, I never gave much thought to anything in there (well, apart from some of my books). I don’t know that I can even tell you much about what’s in there anymore.

The other day, it occurred to me that I could not recall the date or month of my wedding. It took me the better part of a half hour to even settle on the month, and I only arrived at that conclusion by pondering contextual clues, like the fact that school was in session and that it wasn’t cold outside. (Yes, I have been married, and looking back now I think it’s crazy that I got married in my twenties. What kind of hubris was that? How could I have believed I had the wisdom to make that decision at that age? I sincerely believe now that marriage is like owning a gun: it’s not something to be undertaken lightly, and it should be subject to restrictions. My ex-husband may have up and left in a way that was cruel, but he was right about one thing:  it was for the best.)

The end of my marriage was something that was devastating to me at the time. Being awake often felt unbearable, to the point that I was numbing myself with clonazepam more often than not, empty prescription bottles lining the countertop in an ever-expanding phalanx of squat orange soldiers. But not even ten years later, I can’t remember my wedding date? I’m all Don-it-will-shock-you-how-much-it-never-happened-Draper over here?

And of course, I essentially left the US and never looked back. I never felt even the slightest twinge of homesickness. I thought of my family and friends and missed them, but I missed them, not the US. And certainly not in a way that made me long to return. When R and I got into a big argument in Athens, and I just wanted to escape (I did not actually end up going anywhere, but in the moment I was so overwhelmed and distressed that I was feeling very much in the “flight” half of fight or flight), it wasn’t to the US that I wanted to flee, it was to Italy. “Home” in that moment felt like Florence. (As a fun sidenote, to this day, we still use “looking at flights to Italy” as a catchall phrase to describe moments when I have convinced myself that it’s the end of all and I need to cut and run.)

I feel disturbed by this seeming ability to forget things, even things that I hold/held dear. Especially the things I held dear! How very Buddhist of you, some might say. Behold! Non-attachment! But it’s not that at all. I feel things deeply, and I generally experience a great deal of pain when it comes to loss or absence. Frankly, I’m glad that my marriage has faded into the past like a bad dream, but there are other things I don’t want to forget, that I don’t want to let go of. And all the places I’ve been and the memories I’ve made there and the feelings they gave me—I don’t want to forget them. To forget them, to me, increases the risk that I’ll return to existing, so I simply can’t. And yet still I fear I might. 

“Everything goes,” is another line from Play It as It Lays, and it’s one that frequently reverberates in my mind. When we first decided to leave New Zealand, I felt tremendous anxiety about leaving. New Zealand was my adoptive home (in the sense that it adopted me, not the other way around), my calm in the world’s seemingly never-ending storm, my warm cocoon. Even before any firm plans had been made or any flights had been booked, the very idea of departing left me emotionally exhausted.

Yet once I touched down in Australia, it didn’t take long before New Zealand felt far away, fuzzy around the edges. Do not misunderstand me—I still remember so much of my time in New Zealand, and I can’t imagine my fondness for that country ever diminishing. It’s also true that Australia is rich in places that I love, so of course I’d feel a bit starry-eyed to be back. Even so, it still feels a bit troubling to me that the place I called home for two years faded into the background so quickly. Everything goes.

Not that long ago, I had to go back to Australia so that I could reset my visa for Indonesia. Sitting down to breakfast in Sanur on the morning of my flight, I took in my surroundings (white hot sunshine, cloudless blue sky, little orange-shingled roofs peaking (yes, I do mean “peak,” not “peek”) through the trees, the smell of incense heavy in the air, the stone altars draped in their colorful cloths) and experienced such a pure, profound swell of happiness. How could I ever leave? I thought.

But leave, of course, I did, and by the time I touched down in Melbourne that night (a city that I love, and one that has rocketed quite close to the top of my “favorite cities” list), Bali already felt a world away. I walked the streets and laneways of the city, taking in the familiar sights, soaking in the street art, and I felt right at home. I went to Brunetti (Brunetti Oro in the CBD, not Brunetti Classico in the Carlton area—this is an important distinction), which is one of my favorite places in Melbourne, and it was like I’d never left. I stopped by Kirk’s Wine Bar and Brother Baba Budan and the State Library of Victoria (seriously incredible), and I smiled beatifically at it all. (As a note, in Melbourne, you will always discover new laneways and alleys you had no idea existed; it’s like a maze, but with no wrong turns.)

So what if, when I return to the US, something similar happens, but without the benefit of being swept away by my new surroundings? What if all of these places and experiences from the past many years fade? What if I forget what it’s like to see the world as wide open, forget what’s it like to live bigger? I don’t have plans to remain in the US. I want to be the architect of my own life, and my design does not include—at least for the next few years—a protracted stay in the US. But I didn’t have plans to be in New Zealand for all that time, either, and look what happened. What if I somehow get stuck in the US, unable to leave for years, and I lose touch with all of the excitement and possibility that my travels have ignited? This is what keeps me up at night, what gives me that heart-stopping, wall-clawing moment of terror.

There are things that are softening the blow of returning, things that I’m looking forward to. R and I have a plan for my arrival. He’s going to pick me up at the airport and we’re going to go to Atlantic City. (I have never been there, and while I know that today’s Atlantic City is far from its zenith as “America’s Favorite Playground,” the romantic in me is drawn to its faded dark glamour and seedy underbelly—in my mind, Atlantic City is all money and mobsters, glittery casino lights and Nucky Johnson, Boardwalk Empire and Bruce Springsteen and Lana Del Rey’s “Hundred Dollar Bill.”), Then we’re going to NYC and Long Island for a bit. These things, and just seeing R and my family and friends, genuinely excite me and help to make the medicine go down.

But once the initial glow from this fancy homecoming and these sweet reunions wears off, what then? I know I’m sensitive to things. Other people might see this all as no big deal. Some people may even think I’m catastrophising. I imagine they might say that it’s just more travel. It’s not permanent. The US is not the big bad wolf, the world isn’t going to shrink. And I know that I often build things up in my mind.

But three and a half years is a long time. A lot has changed. I have changed. And in this moment, as I type this from a coffeeshop in Ubud… Well, to quote Maria one more time, “I’m working very hard at not thinking about how everything goes.”