On Belonging

There are many moments that stand out from my recent trip home to NZ, climbing mountains, seeing friends, holding my new born niece when she was hours old, hearing one nephew finally say my name, and playing endless games of cricket or basketball with the other.  But there has to be something to be said for those moments when you just think, I am right where I am supposed to be.

As human beings, I think that we like to feel a part of something, like we fit and that people understand us.  Over the last six months of 2015, I struggled with this.   A number of my friends had moved back, some had babies and others passed away.  I lost one person a month for those months and by the time I boarded the plane to head back to NZ, I was feeling burnt out and well over it.  I was looking forward to having my Mum look after me, to seeing my family and to getting away from work and London for a while.  This is an odd feeling for a fiercely independent and London loving person.  I have spoken before about my relationship with London, and how it’s a great city to leave and an amazing city to come home too.  To be so glad to leave it behind this time was a bit heart breaking for me.  

There are times when I look at the situations that I get myself into and think that a comedy sit com, could not have been written better, but that these things are actually happening to me.  I often read too far into off the cuff comments, I stress internally about what to say to people and often use laughter or comedy to cover up these anxieties.  I am lucky that I have a few really good groups of friends who get this and make it easy for me to fit in.  They appreciate my off the wall sense of humour and see past the craziness.

I was lucky enough to spend time with two of these groups of people in NZ this time and it was like a balm for my soul.  The first is a group that I literally grew up with.  There is not much that these girls do not know about me.  I have known one of them since I was five, and the others we found as we grew up.  The thing about this group is that from the outside, I don’t fit, they are all married, have kids and are quite sorted with their lives.  They seem to have shit sorted.  Whereas often I feel like I wing my way through life and that I have no plan other than where my next holiday is going to be.  My last two trips home have been rather rushed, so I was not able to spend as much time with these chicks as I would have liked.  This time was a bit different.  At our normal Christmas get together, I was relieved to hear that they feel just like I do.  They don’t think that they have anything sorted either.  They too wonder what they are going to do with the rest of their lives and have a whole different pile of worries to me.  At the end of the evening, it was down to four of us left and we really caught up.  We laughed, drank wine, got serious, laughed some more and it felt like I had never left.  I felt like I fitted and that these people got me.  Maybe it was finally being with a group of people my own age, who have been through so much with me, that I didn’t feel like I had to watch every word and look for hidden meanings, I was at home.

The second group are my long lost London family, who have all moved back to Australasia.  These are the group of people who understand my wanderlust.  Who get what it means to want to go everywhere and see everything.  They get the feeling of being torn between home and the rest of the world.  These are the people who ask when you are coming back, but totes get it that you are unable to give them an answer.  There were many moments that stand out for me – dancing the night away at Caz & Alex’s wedding with my London crew as if we were still in London, Simzy was even singing.  But New Years is where I really began to think about where I belonged. 

 

New Year for me, is always a time for reflection.  I tend not make big grand resolutions, if I do, I quickly forget them.  I like to think about the year that I am saying goodbye to, the good and the bad and think about what I want from the next year.  A new job, more travel and maybe do something about making time in my life to begin dating again.  When the New Year arrived, I was right at home.  Sitting next to Cate, listening to Simzy sing, next to a bonfire and cracking jokes with a really fun lady that I had just met.  I remember upholding tradition by demanding to make Cate & Aaron’s hug a group one and thinking, there is nowhere else in the world that I would rather be right at this second.  There were people who were missing of course, but I am kind of used to missing people at this point.  And then in typical me style, I spent the next few days wondering what it meant.  Did I want to move home?  Probably.  Am I going to?  Unlikely in the next two years.  But it was a powerful feeling in that moment to feel like I fitted.  To feel like I belonged.  To feel like I had never been separated from these people.

All of this lead up to very emotional goodbyes from NZ.  I am normally a mess leaving my family and friends, this time was no exception.  Knowing that the next time I see my niece Lily, that she will likely be walking, was devastating.  She was just starting to turn her head towards me when I talked, and I am going to miss out on her when she is little.  Also hearing that my wee nephew is still three weeks on standing in the doorway to my bedroom saying ‘Nicca?’ makes me both happy and sad at the same time.  Happy that he can say my name and sad that he doesn’t understand where I have gone.  As predicted it has taken me a while to settle back into London.  Flying into Paris and being met by my number one travel buddy helped – I think that he was scared that I was not coming back.  One day running around in sunny, freezing Paris, before heading back to reality was just what the doc ordered.  He totally got it when I shed a tear in the taxi back to Clapham.  And that is where it leaves me.  I am missing home terribly, up to my neck in work, trying to save money, lots of friends to catch up with and holidays to plan.  And beginning to fall back in love with London again.  Do I belong here?  Nearly


PS - you may have been wondering where I have been since September - you can see what I have been up to at www.dothedaniel.com where I have been writing about my travel adventures.