An Update in Two Parts
Part 1: What’s Been Happening?
The last time I posted something was in August. I haven’t been sitting here doing nothing for the last four months. I just needed a break.
I actually wrote a whole blog post about my first several weeks in Hanmer Springs, but as I was reading it back it just seemed too pessimistic. I tried to articulate that I was having a difficult time, but it was still too fresh in my mind and came out sounding sad and lonely.
So, I’ll give you a brief recap from a Story who is much happier than the Story a few months ago.
August was not great. I was very confused about everything. I didn’t know if I wanted to stay in New Zealand anymore, but I didn’t know where I would go instead. Running away wasn’t really an option, as it had been in the past.
My days were weird cycles of marveling at the beauty of this part of the country and then sinking down into the lowest lows I’ve felt in recent memory and not caring about the beauty at all. It went past loneliness, it was a purposeless feeling that’s hard to articulate. Sometimes I had to stop what I was doing and just sit down, head in my hands. Usually I can get myself out of lows like this, but for some reason this distressed feeling went deeper, and I couldn’t even find solace in myself. It was a new and scary feeling.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what was going on. I felt like I was trapped and free-falling at the same time. The shine of New Zealand had worn off. I was over the halfway mark of my one-year visa. The question that I had been blissfully ignoring for the past six months was creeping up again: “What’s next, Story?” I began to worry that I needed to have it all figured out again, to have an idea of where I was going next, and the answers didn’t seem any clearer, even though I’d been so focused on “finding myself” for the past seven or eight months.
It’s easy to want to be one of those people who says they “take life day by day,” and “live in the moment,” but for me it’s really, really hard to actually do that.
I didn’t wallow in this, though. (I did for a minute, but then I got my shit together.) Throughout August and September I spent time trying to understand this weird pain. I said: “I’m not going anywhere,” and that I wanted to befriend whatever it was that I was feeling. I had been learning not to push things away anymore, and it was time to put those lessons to work.
The results are looking good. I had to break myself down and then build myself up again over the course of a couple of lonely months, but I’m grateful for it. It taught me a lot about myself and the way that I deal with feelings and existential stress.
But what has my life looked like lately? Well, it’s funny you should ask, because it’s kind of exactly what I wanted when I thought about living in New Zealand. I wanted to find a random place in the mountains, do a job I’d never done before and learn to r e l a x, something that I’d been finding so difficult to do in the months before I left the USA.
I’ve ended up in one of the most idyllic and well-loved places in the country, in a small village among the mountains, a less-than-two-hour drive from two of my favorite NZ cities, with the nicest thermal pools I’ve yet encountered. When I’m not working at my very chill job, I hang out with my friends (I’ve found a couple of real gems here), read, write or go on walks where every view is stunning. I’m, dare I say, taking it easy. The tension of the last six years of my life is fading every day.
From the outside it might not look like I’m doing anything super productive - I haven’t written that novel, I’m not taking online classes, I didn’t end up learning guitar (yet). But that’s not why I came to New Zealand. I came here to learn how to live peacefully and create my own life and fresh start, and this place is slowly teaching me new ways to do that all the time. Life isn’t a race, and I finally don’t feel behind.
My working holiday visa is going to expire on February 2nd, 2020. However, my time in New Zealand actually won’t actually be over then (fingers crossed). I’m on my way to being granted a work visa, so as long as I want to stay in Hanmer Springs and clean houses, I can remain in this beautiful country. Did I manifest this???
I’m so lucky – there a couple of friends of mine who are also sticking around past the initial one-year visa we all got, and other friends who will be here for a while, too. I entered this country completely alone, not knowing a single soul. I’m not alone anymore in the slightest. This place has really become the home that I had secretly hoped it would when I got on that plane on my 24th birthday.
Part 2: Take Your Time Coming Home
Now I'm not scared
Of a sound
Or the states
Or the stages.
I had a thought when I was sitting on the beach in Westport:
This is the first time in my life I’ve lived in a place that I’m not constantly wishing to leave.
I sat there, watching the waves and it snuck up on me, caught me by surprise.
Is this what it’s like to want to stick around somewhere?
What a nice feeling!