If only I could swear in another language. 
Or maybe two, or three..you know if I really needed to let rip. To let it all out. To vent my spleen.
Constant craving.
Constant frustration.
It’s bad form to tell you what, in colourful lurid detail. So it would be helpful to explode in fluent French (for example). I don’t know anyone in France who would be offended.
Suffice to say ….
STUFF!
In BIG capital letters with exclamation marks, maybe even a couple of asterisks, and a few intimated read-between-the-lines f words.
I realised as I went to sleep last night there’s only three months to find the £8000 pounds I need to take my family home for Christmas. My Englishman hasn’t even met my Mum and Dad, or been to Australia, where they live. My kids haven’t seen their grandparents for three years or so now. I’ve realised that I can live here if I can make semi-regular trips home. To feel the sand between my toes and the sun on my back. To connect with my roots, my land. To remind myself and my family that I am a Kiwi, and I belong somewhere. I’m sure I feel more homesickness as an expat than my kids because they have been home, they went home last Christmas. But I did not.
It doesn’t seem possible.
Bar lottery tickets, or book advances, or instant internet success….
Then there’s all the frustration involved in living so closely, so on top of each other and trying to run a business from the corner of my bedroom, and having not one place in the house to retreat to when I want to be on my own.
Not to mention the dishes that have sat on the bench for about three days now, and the carpets that need cleaning, and the washing and tidying and filing, and cooking and banking..
Even listing it depresses me. For that’s what depression is isn’t it; anger that cannot be expressed. Repressed anger, feelings of loss of control, of having no choice. Or perhaps the fear that somehow the choices you made were the wrong ones and now there’s no way back.
A kind internet friend told me the other day in the immortal words of Finding Nemo – ‘keep swimming Dorrie’.
So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m a strong swimmer. Not a stylish swimmer but a strong one. I used to spend a great deal of time under the water. I spent the last month of pregnancy with my first child practically submerged. I love the quiet world, the hum of the filter or current, and the soothing rythym of your own heart in your ears.
I’ve swum with sharks, they don’t bite – often. In fact on one of his trips Down Under when my Englishman studied the photos from the day in the surf he could clearly make out the figures of bronze whaler sharks swimming behind him in the surf. It didn’t worry me, I knew they were there. You just need to keep swimming and be confident. Sending out the vibe that you can survive, like walking down the road at night with a fixed pout and a bunch of keys stuffed between your clenched fingers..
Keep swimming…keep swimming..keep swimming…
And breathe, every now and again.
Image: Flickr Creative Commons
miusam
