Hindsight is
both a curse and a gift. Mistakes made are so obvious when a slightly older,
slightly wiser version of you trawls through old memories. But that’s the
thing; they are memories and nothing more. That time has passed and all we can
do is grow…
***
I fell in love
when I was eighteen to the boy that is now the father of my children. It was
like any young love, only it was ours; fierce and bright and strong with no
thought of the future, until we realised that life was taking us in opposite
directions. He was Swedish. I was Australian, our lives separated by a world in
between. He was going back to the north, to his home and I was staying. Being
away from him was only half living. My thoughts wandered to him always. My
heart had already left with him and before long, with nothing but my suitcase,
the rest of me followed too.
When I arrived
on the frozen ground relief spread through my bones like nothing I have felt
before. I could breathe again. I felt at home, not in Sweden, but with him. I
was shy, young, attached to my lover like I was reliving an ancient love tale.
It was infinite and all consuming. My first child grew slowly inside my
expanding belly and for a time I felt complete, blissful in knowing that my
baby would be joining me in my love-filled dream, my little world.
Months and
months went on before I realised how much I had drawn into myself. I hadn’t
made a life for myself; I had created my own world inside the walls of my
apartment, away from the newness beyond. My baby boy was perfection but as he
grew, I grew too. My ambitions and my loneliness slowly eating away at my
euphoria and then suddenly I was lost. After almost three years I longed for
home, but the boy I had fallen in love with had his life here, his friends, his
family. He had a history, familiarity and a comfort that I yearned for.
We had three
different homes in a matter of months and four weeks after our second child was
born we left the grey Swedish Winter for Australia, the promise of the burning
sun too tempting to resist. It was both wonderful and heartbreaking. We were
together with our small ones but we were leaving behind half of our family. I
had been too busy, too blind to realise that we were so loved and that each
time we moved it meant we would be taking a part of their lives away. It was
both misery and elation. We felt torn. We learned quickly the consequences of
our spontaneity and wanderlust. The hardships that we thought we had left
behind were only the beginning. After weeks I could see the same struggle
that I had gone through, only this time I was observing. It was ferocious and
dark and then nothingness, like waves in a storm. Somewhere, in the ceaseless
moving, our emptied pockets and the broken beginnings of friendships, we had
forgotten how to live. We became lonely and bored and started to forget each
other too.
For the first
time we stopped. For the first time we were honest with ourselves. The mistakes
we’d been so blind to became obvious. In the night, when our beautiful babies
slept, all the truths and faults and naivety flowed from us and in the end we
discovered that the life we had chosen was never going to be easy. Home for us
could never be one place. His home was there, mine was here. We needed to make
our own. We needed to find our common ground. Where it was didn’t matter, as
long as it was a place where we could build our lives together. Somewhere we
didn’t need to feel torn, somewhere we could discover ourselves without one of us
feeling left behind.
We are on the
verge of that adventure. We have found our common ground. We are young and
reckless but broken and now will be the time and place to right our wrongs, to
catch up with ourselves and each other. We know it will take time and work. We
will have to be brave and patient and accept the hardships we have created for
ourselves and continue on regardless. But most of all, it’s our blessing; an
opportunity to learn, to live and to thrive and for that, I will always be
grateful.
