Jo told me today that she was worried how upset I seemed to have moved out and that the side she saw was happy and it was fun and she wanted to say that it really is fun because we have a cool vege patch and its fun dancing with so many people in our lounge room (especially with my steps) and shopping together and creating milk carton telephones between our windows and moving my stuff in through my window and really being in a MILK photo and drooling over our cool bookshelf and singing Christmas Carols in the car as we look at Christmas lights and doing role plays and staying up late talking about kissing boys in dreams and cleaning everything and figuring out how various juicers are put together and beading on the new table and listening to che fu on the way to church and telling each other secrets on my bed by the window and reading my bible out the window and under dainty (in fact becoming acquainted with dainty).
I could go on…
The fact is, moving out has been really fun and I really love what I have been given there, but I am grieving what I’ve lost.
Me and Jane had a good conversation about leaving the nest on our walk. Moving out is an unexplainable phenomenon. I cannot explain why I moved out, it just felt right. It’s a part of life and the fact is at some point in my life I will go through this grief of letting go of some of my childhood.
I’ve really liked moving out because its made me value and appreciate my childhood more but I am so sad because there is some element that I can never have back now. But at the same time there are some really lovely new doors to open that come with this. I think my missing of familiarity is good. It means I am real and that my 20 years of living in this abode of Asquith has meant something to me and deeply affected me. I’d worry if it didn’t.
I don’t change well though. I like constant stable things much like everything else in my life. And I think it will be a slow process. During the daytime in Croydon I am really happy, but when I go to bed I cry. I remember what I am missing and get sad.
I pray that I will be able to celebrate the joy and grieve and value the grief.
I’ve also really liked moving out because its given me a really different perspective on myself. One night we turned up to someones house to bead and realised we’d crashed a church mini party. We just talked to people. And it was actually quite bizarre being around a different group of people to who I normally am. It really made me reflect on myself and the way I relate to people in a different light. It makes me see things from more perspectives than just my typical familiar one which is good.
There have been a lot of things around me lately, perhaps mainly movies that have been about feeling safe and at home. And I think thats the thing that is hard. I have left the home I have known and the place I have felt safe for 20 years and getting up and moving somewhere else takes adjustment. Asquith still feels like home. But it kind of doesn’t because I don’t live here. I’m in this strange limbo of a bizarre world at the moment. I’m out in the world testing the water to create a home with my own identity. That’s a pretty scary thing and it does leave you feeling like you don’t have a home. And its odd because thats what I desire so much just for those familiar feelings of home that I don’t even notice to be back in my life.
Leunig is great and I can’t believe people say he’s not Christian. He sure talks about pretty Christian things if you ask me.
Leunig lets us brings the everyday ordinariness of our familiar lives into our spiritual world without them seeming too frivolous. In fact he celebrates them which is what I love. It’s so inarticulate though. The value of my dog lying on my bed while I read the bible, or why tea is so amazingly spectacular or why having the condiments in the shower in the same place and that routine in my life. I can’t explain it, but without it home isn’t there.
Garden State kind of talked about feeling like this guy was at home with this girl he met. It was kind of nice. Some people do just feel like home. People look so bizarre when you arrive home from an overseas trip after a while. They are so familiar but so foreign from the past month or so. It’s that bizarre look on someones face that makes you know your home. The special familiarity of it, knowing it will always be there. It’s so nice.
I don’t want to be grand. I just want my life to be familiar. Otherwise I may not know myself.
But, moving out I think will just help me find those real familiar things in my life and give me a better understanding of who I am.
Gee I am glad I’m going on a road trip. They’re so reflective sounding and odyssey like and discovery like and do make you have a better understanding of home.
God help us to change. To change ourselves and to change our world. To know the need for it. To deal with the pain of it. To feel the joy of it. To undertake the journey without understanding the destination. The art of gentle revolution.
- Leunig
I think that I don’t know why I felt the need to leave the nest, its unexplainable. It just is a part of the living existence of species. I just hope I can be okay with knowing the need for it. It needs to be done, but it doesn’t mean that I won’t be sad. There will be lots of things. Yes!
