It’s hard to leave again. Each chapter of Australia seems to have a theme, its own tonal focus. This one, this chapter—was family. It was sisterhood.
It was a peering into the shadows of my childhood. Flashing a torch on all the corners I allowed cobwebs to blind. The treasure trove that is childhood.
There is so much there. Infinite feeling. Life lived when everything is magical, and all the while, crippling. Because when everything is the ‘first time’ —the power of it, the severity of novelty is debilitating.
Nothing comparable before or after. All first times like a permanent ink stain adorning your inner wrist. When the writer sits to write, there it is. The first time. First impression. It is where the ink flows from. The memory of it.
Which is, in reality, the memory of the memory. How much do we lose then? To our very own unreliable selves. If you cannot trust even your own memory, what can you trust? I have been reading, ‘Women Who Run With The Wolves’ and the author, Clarissa would tell us — “trust your instincts, wild woman.”
Yet I feel my intuition is often Switzerland. Or is it that I have trained myself to be neutral?
Nonetheless, when I have needed clarity on if something needs to die or to be birthed, the great knowing has pointed the way. And now, I am here. At the end of the world. At the end of a chapter. To let what must die, die.
For something new to be birthed. Why does it feel like I must trade one for the other? A closeness with her (my sister) for a life of my own making?
A great desire to retreat into the mirage of childhood.
A do-over.
In an effort to absolve my past dismissal of the splendour of childhood. Barbie movies, and jumping frogs. Beating my seven-year-older cousin at treading water. I didn’t appreciate it enough then. I want a redo. Do you understand?
And having this — this sisterly relationship now, feels like a redemption arc. To never turn her away. A practice of patience. To be grateful for her eternal good nature. Her sing-song voice and break-into-a-dance-at-any-given-moment body. To wrap my arms around it. To never let her believe for one moment that I could ever feel anything besides love for her.
Unwavering and unconditional. This is my redo—the redemption. Cut short because I am an adult. We are adults. And I created this life that somehow does not include her. This life that has no base and therefore cannot be rooted, grounded by the home my sister occupies.
She says she barely remembers me as a teenager. Absent in my angst. A disappearing act. Crossing my fingers and toes, my absence will go unnoticed. But it never does. Not by her. And I should be grateful.
Someone notices. But what keeps me coming back is the fear she believes I have forsaken her. And I cannot stomach the thought. And still, I have built this life that lives on its own kind of soil. Tetherless. Except for people.
It is not a place or places where this life is built upon, but people. My boyfriend. My friends. Floating as well.
Across countries — hoping we’ll bump into each other, if time and coincidence allows.
This other life is tethered only to her.
And she is homegrown, Australian soil.
I fear I cannot grow here.