Recently, I have spent a lot of time in airports, waiting for delayed flights.
I have been carrying my tiny suitcase up and down dingy flights of stairs, being scared half to death by European elevators, which to me seem more jail cell or moving coffin than anything else.
I’ve been in new countries every week, trying out new words, Tak! Obrigada! Merci Beaucoup! Flushing red as they tangle grotesquely in my mouth.
I have been eating extremely well, having cute conversations with strangers and walking so many steps my feet beg me to just catch a damn uber girl.
I’ve been the top of the leaderboard in Japanese on duolingo, simultaneously feeling smug about my thirty something day streak, about using my airport time efficiently, while also being fully aware it means nothing at all and I’m no less likely to forget every sentence other than, I’m so sorry, my Japanese is bad, when someone new mistakes my okay pronunciation for an more than minimal grip on the language itself.
It’s funny, my friend Shirley says, in the oppressive heat of our third floor Parisian airbnb, maybe you’re so afraid of speaking in another language because words are your ‘thing’ it’s always been how you so easily express yourself.
It’s not the first time I have a revelation talking to her during the time we spend together: in cafes watching the coolest people in the world walk by, outside tiny bars that serve only natural wine and ice cream, like it makes more sense than anything else in the world, but especially now, draped, sweating, over a couch, eating overripe fruit from a brown paper bag.
There are multiple moments where I stop, and take down notes in the app on my phone.
I wonder: is there a greater luxury than time spent with friends?
I ask myself: when did we forget how important this is?
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When I left Sydney in May, I had been moving through a month of extreme grief.
I grieved saying goodbye to my ex, to the future we had mapped out. I grieved saying goodbye to our cat, who I loved so much it scared me a little, and to the home we shared, the home that formed the background of The Daily Rest Studio for a year straight.
Mostly, I grieved and grieved finally releasing the grip on what I had deemed A Normal Life.
Something that has always felt just out of reach for me.
Even though the word ‘normal’ is stupid and meaningless because everyone and every single moment is so heart shatteringly unique ‘same-ness’ is not even close to a possibility: it’s always something I thought I should want, thought I was wrong for not having a shred of.
That was, until I found myself having four hour dinners with friends on the other side of the world.
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