 | So Long, Farewell…By Grace Downunder |
Gather round, girls and boys, and let me tell you about one of my amazing skills.
We all know it’s not cooking . It’s not something awesome like magic or even something useful like knowing sign language. No, my special skill is the ability to make people disappear…. Not so much the “up in a puff of smoke” type of disappearing, but disappearing in the sense of having people leave the state, and is most cases, country.
If we review the statistics, in the last eighteen months I’ve lost about seven people to the big, wide world. Most do the typical Aussie thing and return to the mother country but I’ve also managed to disperse people to other parts of the globe. Of those people, one was the first girl I fell truly, madly and deeply in love with, the second was another girl I had a killer crush on, the third was my last girlfriend and the most recent will be an entirely lovely girl I’ve just met online who is gearing up to move to the Big Apple. Love interests aside, two of my very best friends both ended up moving to the other side of this wide, brown land and one of them is now moving to London in mere days, not to mention the countless other friends have also made the leap or are knee-deep in serious preparations!
I guess I’m kind of like Sarah Jessica Parker’s character in Failure to Launch. Except that I don’t do it intentionally… nor does the person have to fall in love with me and, to date, no one has ever paid me for my services. I share my skills for free, maybe even too freely since it’s pretty well only ever people I’d really rather have around that end up going. However, I must admit I am not without fault. I too have up and run away overseas for a while, but I was thoughtful enough to do it while I was single and when everyone else was staying put.
I am really not sure how to rectify this mass exodus that seems to be happening in my social circle. I don’t want to prevent anyone from going and having their adventures and I’ve tried meeting new people to top up my quickly dwindling friendship group but eventhey are skipping the country. I have even briefly contemplated moving to London myself, if only to drive everyone to leave and come back to Oz again. A lovely person told me that it’s obviously a sign that I am friends with really fantastic, driven people if so many of them want to go out, experience life and make their mark on the world, which I suppose is true…but is it so bad to want someone to just stick around (or even just come back!) and drink cocktails with me?
Come on, let’s hear it! Is anyone else blessed with the skill to drive people away? Maybe your skills lie in a different area? Got anything to distract me from the fact that all my peeps are leaving me?
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January 8th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
I have the amazing skill of attracting people who had previously moved or drifted away, unfortunately I always attract them back right when I will be moving. So now I’m surrounded by old friends whom I will be leaving soon.
January 8th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
I had that problem when I lived in NYC. I blame the city, not me! (or you). NYC attracts transients.
Now I’m in New Haven for graduate school, and it’s very settled on a school-year basis, except that people are all “well, I don’t know how many more years I have left on this dissertation…” Plus everyone leaves every school vacation.
January 8th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
I work in an industry where nearly everyone’s on a fixed-term contract, so most of the people I met through work in London a few years ago have dispersed to other places in the UK, Spain, Canada…. A depressing number of my female friends are on the point of giving up careers they’ve invested years of their lives in just so they can live with their partners for more than a month at a time.
My worst dispersal was an ex (I say that for simplicity’s sake–still haven’t worked out what she really was…) who quit her steady government job and moved abroad to a country we’d both used to travel to a lot. And found herself a nice Sylvanian husband within a year…
January 8th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Hey Grace,
Until recently, I was one of those dastardly people that disappear overseas. I spent nearly a decade living in Chicago, in the US.
A few months ago I returned home to New Zealand (cross-tasman holla!!), to come across a similar problem to you … because I was friends with people back in NZ that were like me, they being immigrants or the kind of people that live and breathe travel, naturally, upon returning, they’re all not here anymore.
They’re either in the mother-country, or in Asia, or the US. I’ve returned to find my rather large friend-network back here virtually gone (doesn’t help that I’ve moved to a new city either, Wellington, where I hadn’t lived really before).
So add in the rather strange culture-shock I am experiencing being back in NZ (strange, strange country that it is), to the fact that I am discovering that all the people I got along with, are themselves not here.
So yeah, I’d say take heart from what your friend said, that you are friends with such people that do such travel (hell, I’m the same way, I have a hard time socialising with people that don’t share such) … and then realise, that eventually, many of us ex-pats do come home, and it’s wonderful to find those we knew still back there …
Admittedly, I’m hopefully getting into a career that will involve more long-term travel, but hey …
January 9th, 2010 at 1:09 am
Hello there Grace!
Apparently, I don’t have the ‘magic’ to make people disappear…but I somehow make myself disappear, due to my adventurous spirit. I am not like Julia Roberts in ‘Runaway Bride’. I’d stay if I could but everytime things feel so right…circumstances beyond my control happen. Like a career move.
Err…I’m not sure if long distance relationships work for me. Thanks to technology, it is much easier to keep in touch with loved ones (family and friends). But as to having new or opening up to new relationships…sometimes I’d have to think many times gaugeing if it’s worth the risk…or the staying. I’m a femme who opts for a real relationship, not the fling ones…so I’d always ask myself when my gaydar is super-duper active: “she’s so hot and smart and maybe this could work out…for how long?” and when the gaze (magnetic as it is) would denote an answer much like: “one night – about two weeks.”- I’d then disappear with my magic words. “NEVERMIND.”
I come from the Philippines and currently staying in Thailand and at times goes to Malaysia. Here in Thailand, I find that even straight women somehow have that ‘gaydar’ in them..weird, but much more freedom even if talking about it is still a taboo. I am currently in a relationship with a femme (Thai) and we’re together for more than a year now. I’ve never been this brave or courageous about my identity…or what makes me really happy. Think of Bette Porter and Tina- that’s us…a lot of similarities even in the field of work (except the part of having the baby). I can relate much to Bette, especially when things were tough and she just wanted to ‘disappear’ with the monks in the mountain. I am not out to my parents yet…(I figured they’re not yet ready to hear the truth) though most of my family know. And now there is a call for another career move…a promising one. I’m sure my gf and I can figure out something but the distance is what I am worried about. But oh well…
Sway
January 9th, 2010 at 1:39 am
And now there is a call for another career move…a promising one. I’m sure my gf and I can figure out something but the distance is what I am worried about. But oh well…
Sway, if you don’t mind I’d like to bring up my experiences in this (if Grace will grant the chance to post twice and hopefully not dominate the thread).
When I left the US I was with another femme woman I was (and still am a little) head over heels in love with, and she, much to my continued amazement, was with me (she is Philippina-American). We hated thinking about the time that was my departure back to NZ, but we did talk about it, and made a decision.
We both decided that despite being very much in love, we were going to end our relationship, Neither of us know where our careers were taking us, so it wasn’t like we could see a finite end to our separation, and we didn’t want to hold the other back, so as painful as it was, we ended it.
We both love each other very much, and stay in regular contact, she is now seeing someone, and I’ve been on a couple dates myself. It hurts, but her happiness is really important to me, so that’s what counts.
Don’t want you to think tho that I am suggesting this for you!!! Just heard your story and it sounded really familiar is all …
January 9th, 2010 at 5:31 am
Hi Grace Downunder!
I’d jus tlike to leave a reply to Sarah…
I understand what you mean. I appreciate your insight. =) Thank you for sharing your story, makes me remember that this ‘come and go’/'self-disapperance’ thing and saga happens to a lot of us…
However, I don’t know if its just me…or many of you with such wild hearts might have felt ‘tired’ of moving a lot too much…and finding the right one, the one that feels sooooo right, the one relationship that you fought for through thick and thin, something that really makes you say at the end of the day ‘THIS IS WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT.’….”THIS IS HOME.” …everything feels so right even things aren’t perfect- makes me think if its worth letting go…or worth staying and fighting for.
I am sure there are always a LOT BETTER fishes in the ocean called life. =) Much more in our lesbian life. But I figured, happiness is a choice. She makes me happy. But I just wish life is a whole lot less complicated than that. So for now, we’re going to make other options and see how we’ll work it out. Tough times.
Have a great day everyone!
Sway
January 9th, 2010 at 5:42 am
Sway,
“I don’t know if its just me…or many of you with such wild hearts might have felt ‘tired’ of moving a lot too much…and finding the right one, the one that feels sooooo right, the one relationship that you fought for through thick and thin, something that really makes you say at the end of the day ‘THIS IS WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT.’”
This is so wonderfully put I just wanted to quote it … funnily enough I do know what you are talking about. I’ve lived on three different continents now, and I’m into my 30′s, and something is telling me that maybe it’s time for me to find that someone, to make roots, to find that person with whom to share a place and a life with, whomever she is.
That’s starting to seem really important … though on the other hand, I see travel shows or the like, of places, and my feet tingle, and a part of me worries about whether or not I can just stay in one place. Maybe the fight then is with myself that I need to wage? Ah well, late night thoughts here in NZ …
Thanks for the reply Sway, it was wonderfully put