All In

I’m grieving. 

It’s October 2023 and I’ve been travelling for six months. I change accomodation almost every week. I live out of a carry on suitcase. I have an identity crisis, almost daily, mostly related to how I dress, the state of my hair and occasionally, how the skin around my eyes is noticeably changing with age. 

I’ve had my visa application in since June. It could take another six months to be approved. I want to move to Tokyo so badly it scares me, the raw desire of it. It’s ugly, chaotic, aggressive even, how badly I want this thing. I don’t like how it makes me feel. I want to be in control. I want so badly to be in control it surprises me. 

Whatever is meant to happen will happen I tell anyone who will listen. These are words I genuinely live by, but in this situation I abhor them. I hate the taste of them in my mouth. I tell everyone I’ll be fine if it doesn’t work out and of course I will be, eventually, but I wonder if they believe me. I wonder if I believe myself. 

I am all in on this, even when I say I’m not. 

I am all in, and it terrifies me. 

I’m grieving. 

It’s October 2024 and I’m looking at the weather app. 

Just like last year, I woke up one day and it was Autumn. 

Unlike last year, this time, I can stay. 

The autumn cicadas are here. Autumn cicadas are softer, bell like, hypnotic. I love them. I want to hold the sound in my cupped palms and play it on repeat. I’m sleeping with the balcony doors and windows open, finally. It’s still 31 degrees at 2pm, occasionally, but it won’t last long. 

The texture of the air has changed. The space in between seasons is fleeting here. It makes me want to hold on to every single moment of the day, in fear I’ll never see it again. I’m not sure why I don’t always live this way. 

I’m laying on my bed looking at the weather app, watching the temperature dropping faster and faster over the week ahead. My heart catches in my chest. 

It doesn’t matter how brutal summer gets, I still miss it when it’s gone. 

I’m grieving. 

It’s Monday afternoon and our car pulls up in front of a ryokan.

I think I’ve been here before. 

We walk into the lobby and I’m hit by the scent of green tea, gently roasted over hot stone. 

I’m immediately transported back to eight years ago. 

We drove last time. Arrived late at night and left the next morning straight after checkout. Back then, I was vegan, we all were, and the ryokan couldn’t accomodate us for dinner, so we ate at a local izakaya. Probably chips. It’s what I remember most about that trip. The active volcano. The argument that erupted when I said I didn’t love Prince. The ferry to Yakushima. Never finding enough to eat. 

Later that evening I’m alone, laying back against the hot, wet rocks of an outdoor onsen, the same one I sat in eight years before. 

Eight years ago it would have been impossible, diabolical even, to imagine my life would look like this. 

I celebrate the part of me who dared to even entertain the thought. 

The seed has to be planted, tenderly, hopefully, before it has the chance to grow.

I’m grieving. 

I wonder if this is the first time I’ve been all in on something. 

I notice how unsafe I feel without an escape plan. Without one foot out the door. I wonder if maybe, I’m actually a commitment-phobe. 

It’s October 2023 and I’m back in Tokyo after a few weeks away. The feeling almost consumes me. Home. I feel guilty for having the thought so it becomes louder. I hear it moving in my body, like the blood in my veins, pulsing behind my ears and around my jaw. 

I am hanging out laundry on a tiny strip of balcony glued to the edge of my air bnb. Home. The apartment is the size of a test tube. I am the experiment. I hope I am going well, but honestly, I’m not sure. 

I wear a cardigan for the first time in months. I buy a pair of velvet shoes with a small heel. I walk around the shops after working all day and I am surprised by how my heart aches for winter clothes. I pick up a heat pack in the shape of a bear. It’s the first time in my life I’ve looked at gloves and scarves with a longing. Home. My body begs to stay as I mentally prepare to fly back to Australia for the summer, the season I love more than anything else in the world. Or so I thought.

I’m grieving. 

I don’t think anyone ever told me about the grief of expansion. In some small way I always knew about it though. 

When you end a relationship, even when it’s your choice, even when it’s the right time, it’s normal to cry and cry and cry and cry. It’s normal to wonder if maybe you’ve made a huge mistake. It’s normal to fear the big empty space it leaves behind. 

It’s normal to cry and grieve not only for the person you loved and often still do love in some large and overwhelming way, but also for the person you were beside them. Maybe for the person you allowed yourself become. Maybe for the person you were when you first met. The person you transformed into to please them. I’m sorry to say it but sometimes it happens, doesn’t it, and it’s the saddest thing in the world.

Remember to hold yourself even tighter, especially in the arms of another.

Choosing something different is worth it. Necessary. Important. 

It’s also heartbreaking to the core. 

I’m grieving. 

I’m working in a densely populated coffee shop in Shimokitazawa when I catch the eye of a friend of a friend I met once, back when summer hadn’t quite started yet and I was invited to a birthday party in a single room apartment somewhere in Tomigaya. 

I was told to bring food and drinks so I went to the basement floor of a department store and selected a box of nicely packaged kimbap. Everyone made a big deal when I placed the box on the table and I felt uncomfortable realising I had overdone it. All the guests who came after me carried bags of chips and cans of beer from the convenience store. I tucked myself between a low, round table and the bed and stayed there the entire night. My friend spilled red wine everywhere. My socks still have the stain. 

I’ve been lucky, mostly, moving to a new country alone, in my mid-thirties. Which is, apparently, a kind of strange and awkward thing to do. I’ve been here so many times I can often get away with fooling most people into believing I’ve been here longer. Most of the social norms are not completely new. But it’s impossible not to stumble, impossible not to notice how the energetic shape of the group shifts uncomfortably when a new and strange person enters the room.

The friend of a friend has recently finished a creative project. When I congratulate them, they thank me before sighing deeply, admitting the hard part is about to begin. 

I can deal with the hustle. But not so much with the space that comes in between.

I’m grieving. 

I’m at the bank and a young British guy walks up to me and asks if I speak English.

He holds a small yellow slip of paper up to my face, close to tears, can you please tell me what the fuck this is? 

I smile. I’m so happy to help it sends a shiver of joy all the way up my spine. 

I grieve the part of me who had multiple breakdowns a week when I first moved here. Drowning in paperwork I couldn’t understand. Unsure if the weekly, at times daily, waves of dread would ever end.

What a gift it is, the electricity of emotion, of pure, undiluted wanting running just beneath the surface of your chest. 

I’m grieving.

I’m sitting on my bed in my Tokyo apartment. 

I’m grieving for all the years I was afraid to go all in. 

I’m grieving for all the years I kept one foot out the door.

I’m grieving for all the years I felt guilty for wanting more.

I am all in on this, and I’m happy to admit it. 

I am all in, finally.

And it fills me with so much hope. 

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notes from the tdr universe~

it’s poetic living month in the daily rest studio

new dates have been added for A Poetic Life writing retreat

♥️