It’s a year to the day that I left Sydney to embark on a new adventure, which is why it’s ridiculously bizarre that I just received a Twitter message from someone saying she found something of mine.
“There is no fucking way my wallet ended up in Sydney,” I thought, my mind wandering toward a recent BuzzFeed article I saw about how a guy figured out that his lost iPhone ended up in China.
But when I got her next message, my heart dropped. In the middle of the streets on New York, not giving a shit about the pissed-off passerbys annoyed at me for stopping in the middle of the street, I gasped.
There have always been weird bits of Sydney that have edged their way into my life the past year, but I must say, this is the fucking most bizarre thing ever.
Here’s the thing, Sydney. I do miss you. I miss you a fucking lot, but it’s getting better because now, it’s only when I make myself think of you. I remember only the best parts of you, I miss only the happy times, and those were only part of the whole. Whenever I get lost in a day dream, my friends are always there to pull me down from the cloud. My niece is there to remind me of why I want to be home. My family is there to make me feel home.
It’s weird. I can talk about you just fine, and I can dream you away, and I miss you in an endearing way. But if I see a picture of you, or if I see your name written somewhere, or if I look at a map, I can feel it in my heart: like someone is just slowly twisting a screwdriver round and round right through the center of it. It hurts. It hurts a lot.
It’s just suddenly so much more confronting that way. And that’s tough.
So I try my best not to look at you, and I do try my best not to think of you. Some days it’s easier than others, and some days, it’s like I can’t avoid it.
I guess I’ll just never understand why.
