We all belong here.

I decided to show both sides of loneliness, the positive & the negative. The starry night represents the more negative impact of loneliness, staying in bed, unable to get up, binge-watching, the mind fighting with its thoughts past 9:00 PM, harmful thought process and perspective.
This is the more harmful side that can be destructive to one’s mental health, especially when it’s excessive.
The opposing side is the acceptance of being lonely. Whilst I understand that loneliness can be very consuming in a negative way, there’s parts to being alone with yourself that is healthy. Coming about by accepting who you are, being out by yourself in nature, self-regulation, can improve one’s mental health. It’s a more brighter outlook once self-acceptance comes to heal a part of ourselves.

Nothing is permanent, and sometimes that's good. The bad stuff isn't permanent either, no matter how awful or how much you hurt in however many ways. It's been a hard four months, and I feel I've retreated inwards and reacted outwards since November, really. Since I moved out. Around Queenscliff/Tasmania/Cremorne/Lorne, I thought I'd feel unencumbered by EVERYTHING - deadlines, physical stuff, even the very ground beneath my feet, and have the most free and wonderful summer ever - no fears or worries or anything other than having fun with my friends all the time, loving on my boyfriend, and cuddling my puppy when I saw him again.

My life seemed chock full of wonderful things - friend catchups, swimming pools, weekend trips, shows, barbecues, music festivals, hiking, ice skating, movie nights and late-night Cremorne Fortnite games. And those moments were wonderful of course, but there was some underlying Thing at the base of it all - and it was that I felt Unreachable. I capitalize Unreachable, and have done since I found the words to describe that feeling, because in a weird way it's a higher plane of feeling. It to me was really a state of BEING more than FEELING - this kind of slow, terrible sadness that ate away at me on the inside. And every time someone looked at me I was terrified they could see right through me, right to my core, infected and infested, sick with this sadness I CARRIED and felt I EMBODIED.

My PMDD worsened over the November, December & January luteal phases. I struggled to enjoy the trips I took - Queenscliff, Lorne, Sydney. I was grateful for how busy and tiring Tasmania felt (and for how exhausting all the hikes were!) - since it didn't give me much time to think at all other than "I hope I get up and down the mountain alive". But anywhere I could relax and "settle", suddenly all these thoughts would crowd me and the incurable, Unreachable sadness would return. It was awful, and I was so terrified of ruining things for the people I loved that I couldn't even enjoy the trips I had been looking forward to for MONTHS. Why was that? I could never put a finger on exactly why, other than a dismissive "I never processed leaving UC and it's festering there as an unhealed wound", and I've since dubbed this time in my head as my "stateless stint" - where I was in and out of Airbnbs and places with so many people - just me, then my friends & I, then Dad & I, my whole family & I, then Aiden & I, and then I was back with my family yet I had never felt so alone, and I am someone who has lived on her own for two years now.

And all I had was that godforsaken black suitcase (which I'd really love to burn, truth be told) and my heavy ass navy backpack. My sparkly blue bag rested on so many different chairs, benches and kitchen counters it must have lost count. Some people love that idea - their whole life down to two bags. Easy. Simple. No fuss. No worries. No strings. I toyed with the idea for a while. There's a part of me that can handle it - the same part that is able to switch off her emotions on a dime when she's moving through an airport to make a flight, even if she's left someone she loves. There's even a part of me that strangely craves it all and fears the stillness - BECAUSE THIS IS ALL I'VE EVER KNOWN. Yes, it damages me and my sweet sensitive soul, but it's familiar, and in some sardonic way I can take comfort in that. "I CAN HANDLE IT."

I don't doubt I'll travel the world. I don't doubt I'll live in so many different wonderful, exciting places where my job takes me. I don't doubt this is my last stateless stint, but this right now is actually a really shitty time of life to experience that. One day, I'm gonna call the shots myself. The company - hopefully an ethical, sustainable, uber creative philanthropic organization with a lot of women in leadership roles - I wind up working for will offer me a place in Citycountrystatefargone, and that's MY DECISION as to whether I want to shift my role and my life and start a new adventure somewhere I've never been. And it'll be exciting rather than dread-inducing, since it's my choice for once. God I can't wait for that day.

That agency component in it all is really interesting. I like the element of choice in a situation like this, and I think it's why I crave adventure the unique way that I do. Why I'd be okay with living out of a suitcase to do something like remote work amidst van life, or live on a boat for six months away from it all. Being untethered doesn't bother me if it's my choice to go. I think the real home I crave IS that choice, and that freedom to choose and to call the shots in my own life. It'll be what I make it, but as long as I'm sort of living in "move out each year" res living, I still feel and embody the same fears as that twelve year old girl feeling the weight of shifting her whole life and feeling forced to start over when she never got the choice. I think that's why I reinvent myself as often and as vividly as I do - I dress in completely different styles, I act differently, I like different things all across many of those years I spent trying to find my place there. Sooner or later one of them would fit into the life I was living, a life that didn't even feel like my own.

There's no kid of mine I'll have know this stateless state. (Rereading that sentence gave me an absolute aneurysm, and I pity any editor here.) When my parents and my friends tell me about the way they grew up, there's a piece of me that aches deep inside, a yearning for something I've never ever known. And I was happy, I had a happy childhood, but it was a patchwork childhood, stitched hastily together with different fabric and by different hands. Still beautiful in its own way, but it often fell short of keeping me warm when I felt like this. When I do settle, I'll settle permanently - my children will know a Home, capital H, and if they ever feel Unreachable, it will not be by statelessness. I knew *home*, but I felt the concept of *a* Home remained just out of my reach, no matter how hard I tried to make all of those places (the PPT apartment, the Lantana house, and where my family still lives now) Home, I still felt strange going back and forth between Austin and Sydney over all those years.

I loved them and missed them sorely when I was away, and I hated to leave. So when Facebook later asked me "Home town🏠💕❓", I couldn't even put one down. I don't even have one now. "From...❓" DON'T AS‼️ I couldn't tell you for the life of me where I'm from. When people do ask, my favorite phrase is "Here, there, everywhere." Possibly because it rhymes. It's not a one minute answer, that question, and I don't always like it. But I DO always like how people look at me when I tell them - like I'm stylish and worldly and wise beyond my years. All things I don't feel - well, it's rare if I do. It's like yeah, it is pretty amazing. Yeah, it totally didn't fuck me up for life and give me crippling anxiety, abandonment issues, detachment-level sarcasm, self-deprecating humor and the biggest No-Home complex since FUCKIN E.T😀👍🏻

I digress. There are some days I like it and some days I don't. But I don't know any different. I can WANT different. I think on some level, everybody does. But I sometimes think of my friends here, born and raised and lived all their lives here, and I wonder if they look at me and my life (lives, rather), and they think how lucky I am to know adventure like that. How lucky I am to have seen so much of the world in my 21 years, to have experienced so many different walks of life that I feel I have lived a thousand lives in just my little old years. It alienates (hiiiiiiii E.T again) me sometimes in that way, and I don't get the culture here sometimes, and my friends don't always get my idiosyncrasies or phrases that are a byproduct of the way I grew up. Most times I can laugh it off. Like 99 out of 100 times, I can laugh it off. That one time? It hurts. I feel like a freak, like I have one foot in both worlds and somehow also no feet in either world.

I don't live or belong There anymore, but I don't seem to fit Here either. And that hurts. And I feel I can talk to no one in that moment because no one would truly understand what it is like. And no one seems to GET IT - that trademark third culture snark earned from literal YEARS of packing up and shacking up Here, There, Everywhere. I said I'm everygirl. I want to be. In many ways, I am. In this way, I'm not. I can't be. Because everygirl is not a third culture kid.

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He had sent them to spy me.
Black grace dancing through clouds on the pale Moon’s night.
Feathery, leathery wings, eyes beady in thought and memory.
Watching and diving as I cast my magic unto reality; something from nothing.

I wander the forests of the Olde Gods, dense and unwelcoming.
I hear the wild hunts ensue. Mortals gifted or dying.
I beware the faerie hills, the homes of the Sidhe.

These dark angels follow, like Sköll chasing the Sun over Her horizon, watching and diving.
No flash of thunder, crack of lightning, born from a bottle, battle or windswept cave would deny them.

I went where none could follow;
The Lands of the Dead, crowds of the lifeless, souls unwelcome and unworthy in Valholl.
The Peaks of Maradi, demons and dark-ones, hollow teeth and long, my blood sings in my veins.
The all-consuming Blodbylgje, the Nine Daughters; Blodghadda, Bylgja, Drofn, Dufra, Heivring, Himinglaeva, Hronn, Koltga, Unrn.
Yet still they followed, watching and diving, watching and diving.

I travelled to the Cavern of Al’Cathere, the Cailleach Mother, birthplace of witches of rock and sea and air and green, fire bright in our wild eyes.
Yet still, they watched and dived.

So, me and my sisters raised our wands and voices,
Struck their feather with our swords as we did our bells.
We tied a knot to bind them in stone and water, flowing and unmoving.
Now I run and dance from Gungnr’s might, never watched nor dived.
Are you satisfied yet, Allfather?

My story is a creative prose regarding the feelings of the invisible audience that can come with loneliness, feeling both on the outside and object of everyone's discourse. At the end of the story, my character finds their community, with whom they are able to dispel the invisible audience. My tale draws inspiration from folklore and Norse myth, but transformed into my own unique story.

Growing up I had struggled with accepting that loneliness would be a part of my life. Loneliness is bad. When I feel lonely then I’m not doing well. When I’m lonely I need to change.
Loneliness comes in many forms, at any time and place. It happens when I’m with others. It happens when I think I’m not alone. It happens sometimes frequently and sometimes not.
But I’ve come to accept loneliness as a part of the human experience. As something we observe and make friends with.

I’m pretty mindful of my privacy here, but I think what I am trying to get across is that there is no easy cure. Just because there’s other people near you, it doesn’t mean you are immune to feeling lonely. I think when I think of gatherings, I think its more like dinner parties, at least that’s what it’s like for my culture. I struggle to link it to life transitions because I have only just finished high school. But the point is you can be with other people but you can still feel lonely.