Melbourne just isn’t New York

Which isn’t a bad thing. The bad thing is the flight, the endless trip with nothing to do but think about blood clots and horrible crashes. Irrational, yes. I never claimed to be the President of Rational. Melbourne is Annabelle. Annabelle is the big sister that I don’t have. And Annabelle is stressed. There’s not great stuff happening for her right now. But Annabelle isn’t the only one who’s floundering. What am I doing? I am single, which I pretend isn’t a big deal, but it is. The pretending isn’t about saving face, though – it’s about trying to convince myself that I don’t care. That being alone and independent is ok, and it doesn’t imply being lonely. Except when it does, which is most of the time. I don’t have a job, which is fine, except when I want a piece of fresh fruit, or ignore the tuition bills that school sends me, or have to cross my fingers when I turn on the tv and wait to see if the cable company has granted me one more day of reprieve in the form of mind-numbing entertainment, or realize that all my clothes look like things that Alice bought before her fateful trip down the rabbit hole. My remarried parents (not to each other) have their own lives, my younger brother forgets I have a pulse, and my wee sister is a full generation younger than me and is busy playing soccer and getting ready for sleep-away camp and middle school. I don’t have a pet. My friends are all away, or in relationships, or busy with their blossoming careers, and the truth is that in those respects, I am expendable to them. I don’t mean that in a petty way, it’s more of the way (warning: sexist generalization ahead) men analyze and quantify things: What’s the return on this investment?  But, and I do mean this in a petty way, why do I have to choose? Why does it have to be Annabelle or family? Why do I make everything so ‘all-or-nothing’? 

Melbourne isn’t exactly starting over, though, in the way that moving to LA or Dublin or London would be. It’s some kind of safe. It’s Jara. It’s a sort of homecoming. 

Why would someone planning a “vacation” start to worry about this crap?  Melbourne is never truly a vacation. It’s always a toe-dip in the pool of what could be, and what once was.