I Live Here Now

This morning I turned my alarm off and slept for another hour, then realized how late I was and ran for the shower. I put on jeans and an old black sweater I’ve had for years plus my new retail-therapy shoes and packed my lunch bag with a fruit leather, a granola bar, my lunch (penne pasta with zucchini and chicken), and my breakfast (oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon) and yelled bye-have-a-good-day to A as I headed out into the cold damp wet that, its resemblance to Seattle in the fall notwithstanding, is in fact Wellington in the almost-spring. I said hi to my co-workers and sat down at my desk and logged into my work computer. I read the newspaper at lunch and discussed Monday’s afternoon yoga class, and made plans to have dinner at Deirdre and Nahum’s. I texted one friend about weekend plans (“Southern Cross again?”) and another friend about the new bellydance class I’m finally going to make it to tomorrow. I have to make sure to stop at the dairy on the way home tonight for another calling card and I need to remember to take out the rubbish tonight too. I’ve got theater tickets for Saturday and am trying to find a cheap flight to Melbourne in November so I can visit a cool girl I met at the Octopus Resort. I have a new duvet cover and a new craft project waiting for me in my new room. I order my hot chocolates and chai lattes trim instead of non-fat and I don’t even blink anymore when I pass the dog-food shelf (refrigerated!) to grab the eggs off the eggs shelf (non- refrigerated).

So, I live here now. It’s a little weird to think how quickly it happened. I felt weird the first week or so I was in town, but I never…I don’t know, I just kept doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing, and now all of a sudden it’s real. It’s really real now. And not just all of a sudden, actually, either, but slowly, incrementally, day by day. I still don’t say “heaps” or “sweet as” yet and people still constantly ask me where in the States I’m from, but my foreign-ness is not the most important part of my life anymore. I no longer have the backpacker conversations about where are you from and where have you been and how long will you be here; I talk about stuff like boys and shoes and candy and karaoke. I have friends and private jokes and favorite cafes and everything that I generally like to have; I’m just having it in a city on the other side of the world from where I’m from.

Part of me is actually a little embarrassed to be enjoying just doing my thing here, which really isn’t that different from what doing my thing was like in Seattle. “Have a wonderful adventure!” everyone kept telling me, and I feel like I’m letting all those everyones down a little bit, with my fluorescently-lit academic job and my granola bars (sorry, muesli bars) and my incessant cups of tea. Part of me feels like I should be a little more…I don’t know. Like I should just be sort of whooping it up here, with no consequences. Like I shouldn’t be getting too close to anyone because I will be leaving soon, like I shouldn’t spend any money on duvet covers or shoes because I should be able to live out of my green pack for the entire year. I shouldn’t do things like rent movies or go dancing because you can do that at home, and the entire point of coming here was to get away from home, right?

I feel like every entry I write should start with my wearily hiking up a mountain to meet with a wrinkled aphorism-spouting sage, or with my talking my way into a year-long bellydancing gig on the ocean-going yacht of a Greek shipping magnate, or with my enjoying the simple joys inherent to wearing overalls and sheep shearing. Every entry should end with my walking off into the sunset, a little weatherstained but with a brave smile on my face, secure in the knowledge that while the going may have been rough at times (that incident when I was thrown into the lagoon filled with pirhanas, for example, or the time I had to swallow the microfilm with the secret plans on it, or the time I had to ninja my way out of a high-stakes poker game played solely by manic-depressive circus clowns each holding a revolver with a single silver bullet in it…), I’ve always—through a combination of cunning, resourcefulness, and a winsome charm all my own—made it through. I mean, right? That’s why I came here, right?

I think the truth is that I don’t exactly know why I decided to come here, and that’s why I don’t really know what to expect from the whole thing. I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing here; it’s always easy to default to the familiar, I guess. Two years ago…no, dude, over two years ago, my reaction to grief was to decide I was going to do something I’d always wanted to do anyway. I am so far away from those original reasons for being here, it’s almost laughable, but I kept thinking about it, kept thinking about it. The more I thought about leaving, the more I actually began planning the more awesome things I started doing and the more I fell in love with my friends and my community and my city, and the more restless I got anyway. I kept thinking that even though everything was going pretty well, I wanted to change something inside me, and that maybe I could do that by changing what was outside me.

The other thing I thought was that, even though I was looking forward to whatever New Zealand had in store for me, I would be instantly and irrevocably homesick. During the time that I was continually saying goodbye to people I thought I would spend my entire time here racking up phone bills and sending postcards and wishing that I could be with my friends and family. That has not been the case. At all. Much to my surprise. I mean, I miss individual people, of course, and I miss things like the Ballard Sunday market and Monday night bellydance class and FAGE 0% yogurt with honey, but I have not once thought that I would rather be in Seattle instead of Wellington at any given time. I see my friends’ birthday party pictures online and I sometimes think that that sure looks like a fun time was had by all, but I haven’t been wistful, if that makes sense. I guess I’m keeping in touch pretty well with everyone and that helps: not like I can’t call anyone I want to talk to, after a couple of furrowed-brown moments where I try to ascertain the time difference and locate my ever-elusive phone card. I’m looking forward to various peoples’ visits this summer, too. So far, though, everything at home feels really far away, and I wonder how exactly that happened. I can picture some parts of my life in Seattle perfectly, can see myself getting on my bus and going to Cupcake Royale and doing all the things I loved about living there, but it’s still difficult to believe that a couple of months ago it was almost summer and I was getting ready to leave my job and the Blue House and all of that. It has not taken very long for me to somehow believe that I’ve always lived in Berhampore (BERHAMPORE!) and always had a coffee card at Espressoholic and always shopped at New World for kumara and Bell tea. I don’t know why that is. Is this the change I was wanting, the ability just to sort of be where I am?

What else will happen while I’m here? When will I know that I’ve got whatever it is I came for?