Where will I land next…
The anchorwoman makes me deeply uncomfortable and annoyed with the world. I feel little other emotion. To me her sniffling at the start of a story about a shell-shocked Syrian boy being pulled out of rubble seems inauthentic and put on for her producer. I close my FB — that’s enough of the world for the day!
How can people’s horrors be cherry picked, packaged up, and sold as news? Although, I do have to admit that I am thankful for Alan Kurdi’s lifeless image on the beach and the response it fuelled last year. Working in the refugee sector, I would like to hope that this public awakening and support for refugee resettlement could expand to embrace displaced populations from other parts of the globe. But then, this hope seems really silly, juxtaposed against Trump, Brexit, fences going up along European borders, and Australia’s offshore punishment of asylum seekers. Fear politics, racism, and xenophobia seem like the usual flavour of the day. Where do I fit admits this discomforting world…
I head to Yoga, to clear my head of our world. The receptionist is the bubbly positive energetic yogi one would expect to find, but today she rubs me the wrong way. Her huge upbeat smile emphasizes to me how disconnected and far I am from such a positive emotional state and her seemingly absent connection to any injustice in the world around us gets under my skin. But, I take a deep breath…..and remind myself I am here to leave frustrations at the door.
Afterwards, I take myself out for a pleasant lunchtime sushi date with my computer to write. I changed tact last night when all the restaurants down the block seemed to busy and bustling with people for me.
I pole vault from being inspired, and driven to speak up and change things, to connect with old friends and the places I love — to feeling lost and exhausted in a city that was too long ago home. I am very cognoscente that I am surrounded by people who seem content with their world, happily settled with a partner by their side, a child to embrace, or a dog to walk. On the weekend, there is the option of over priced markets with things I don’t need, drink and food meet ups that seem repetitive, or the escape of TV episodes and the occasional weekend away! Everything seems so mundane!
I have spent my life moving around, getting excited about new challenges and chapters. I have lived out of a suitcase for the last three years. So why is my hometown so fucking damn hard! I still have dreams about packing, and repacking, and trying to fit everything in. I feel restless in my apartment. I feel pressured to buy more clothes, fill up my walls, offer up a bit of chitchat. I miss the silly strange things, like living off of hotel toiletries for over a year!
I am happy that my work grounds me during the week. My refugee clients are showing me what it is to rebuild a life, and the challenges of being transplanted from a camp to what currently seems like a pleasant but stale city where nobody gets where I am coming from.
This is me, a young women returned from a remote place that nobody I meet can pinpoint on a map; waiting, and anxiously wondering where I will land next….
Jane
