We all belong here.

I used different textues of dark green, browns and earthy tones for the background. There is a tiny singular bright red mushroom in the centre with sticks, rocks and leaves surrounding it. You can see faint shadows of other mushrooms just off the page. the only text on the page is "A-Part?"

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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Trapped within a bubble of colours that are mixed; the unnatural purple, the greens of the world, and silver that contrasts the warm glow. The hair is astray like a bird's nest and is standing at wit's end during the journey through the unknown. I can feel the warm glow—that I once had—dispersing into thin air as I give myself and my energy to the world around me. The light surrounds me, but is detached from my body. I can dress however I want. Here, I am dressed with inspiration from Alice as she falls through the rabbit hole. But no matter what I do I still question, "who is me?" and "who am I meant to be?".

I'm alone in my bubble as everyone stares intrusively, flashing the lights of their cameras, expecting me and demanding that I show my cards and my true colours. But how can I, if I myself cannot determine where to next or who I am. I have no hands to take someone else's, to ask for help as I travel through the unknown. I can sense the presence of others around me—others like me—but they are far away in their own bubbles, world, and path, one that is so clear to them. I am surrounded by people, yet so alone, so raw in a place that I lived in my whole life. Now this place feels foreign and empty.

Silent Sunrise.
Brilliant twilight glow.
Endless starry sky.
People turn their gaze to the universe
Seeking to express thoughts and emotions (in rare moments)
Yet, in most time, forget their existence.
But all things are ever-living.
For life is already shaped by its creator, before time.
So, if we are constantly looking around us in every moment of life.
Each day becomes a journey through the cosmos.

I used to think I’d made peace with loneliness. Certainly, I had experienced a great deal of it, always at least on some level.

The typical ‘alone in a crowded room’, fake smiles and faux friendships comprised my early schooling. I learned to de-code social cues, to engineer acceptable reactions and to be present whilst never being truly present. I came to view it as the way I would walk through life - never truly understood - and concluded that I myself was fundamentally defective.

As I grew older, my mental health deteriorated. Friendships eroded and instead my eating disorder took their place. It provided predictability and reliability; always present.

Loneliness itself was a stranger to me - though it was in my presence, I didn’t know it. I was never alone with it - never fully cognisant. Though I was deep in it, I lacked the capacity to recognise this.

My eating disorder felt like friendship deeper than I had ever experienced. It was the only consciousness that fully understood me. It knew intricately the workings of my brain and promised me comfort. It kept me company internally, despite the isolation that engulfed me. It kept me busy as my network switched from peers to carers.

After a long and arduous struggle, my physical health stabilised and I returned to school. I had both the company of my anorexia - still as loud as ever - and also once more had the surface-level friendships that ticked all the boxes.

I was more aware of my bone-deep loneliness. Though, being surrounded by others combined with the ever-present thoughts allowed me to deny it.

When my schooling soon after came to an end, the weak friendships I’d held seemed to dissolve almost instantaneously.

I was left alone with my disordered mind. For some time, it provided enough to hold on to. Such that loneliness was kept at bay. However, I began realising that the companionship offered by this part of myself was an illusion, and one that came at a great cost.

I had felt aspects of it before, but I’m never all together. It was not until then that I truly experienced loneliness through multiple lenses.

Alone in my experience, something that no other soul in the universe could comprehend to its entirety.

Alone by space, trapped in my room by bollards of broken connections.

Fighting my head alone, given my eating disorder no longer provided the same momentary solace.

It is a deep, soul-destroying feeling. A darkness that feels so final. Vulnerability and fragility and grief. Envy and longing for the mateship that others found so freely.

But it also allowed me to realise the need for change. It drove me to search for others like myself and in turn to discover the Lived Experience field. A wonderful, wholesome, welcoming and healing community to whom no explanation was needed.

People who bore scars in the same places. People who ease and still ease my pain. People who had known and overcome deep loneliness