Can I still post here?

Good news - I can!

It has been very many years since I last posted. In the intervening years I have settled into homeownership in Australia, gotten married, and gotten a dog. That's a lot considering the first 30 years of my life consisted only of moving across the country one time.

But perhaps the most exciting part of my last nine (9!!!) years has been learning ever-more about myself and about myself in the context of a solid, foundational relationship and in the context of becoming an ex-pat. 

The first 7 years of living abroad, I would say, were un-eventful. To be sure, the first 3 years were hell. I think I cried about missing New York daily. And then weekly. And then monthly. By year 4 of living here I was finally feeling more accepting of my adopted country, but I must admit I was never absolutely in love with the energy of my adopted home city. And I never have stopped missing New York City. I wasn't ready to leave NYC when I did, but I didn't want to give up on the relationship that had only had 1 year to exist when my then-girlfriend insisted that either one of us moved or the relationship was ending, she wasn't going to do long-distance any longer. And so, I moved. For many issues, one of which was worry that if we did not work out and my gf had upended her life to come to New York I had no idea how I would separate myself from her, I moved to Australia. And it was a much, much bigger move and life change than I ever would have envisioned.

I am married now, to the same girl I moved to Australia to continue dating. So that's a good thing, everything worked out. We had some serious ups and downs (full disclosure - I was at massive fault for some very poor choices made while dating) but in the end we chose each other to be our forever-people, with all of the work that entails. I'm in the relationship I always heard about and I couldn't be happier.

Interestingly, I'm less thrilled with my life as an ex-patriot living in Australia. Not in Australia per se, I like the work-life balance (totally foreign compared to how life was in the USA, particularly in NYC), and the general casual energy of the country, but just the life of an ex-patriot. Particularly perhaps in this time of COVID, for the last 2 years, I have found myself exposing very American-colors, that I didn't even really know I had.

I'm not really sure on my feelings about everything, so this post will be just a start s I continue to ruminate, but experiencing COVID in a country that restricted its citizens travel outside of the country's borders was....very....frustrating. 

I don't consider myself to be a particularly "patriotic-to-the-point-of-insurrection-and-dying-for-my-country" American. I think that the best citizens of any countries can see the flaws and errors of their country, and I am no exception. I feel that the issues the USA has historically with racism, economic inequality (which, lets face it largely stems from racism), our own history with religious "freedoms", and the damage we have done in terms of establishing capitalism as an economic goal-post amongst a myriad other issues deserve discussion, condemnation, dissemination, and updating.

And yet.

And yet, when I was told by the government of Australia that I was not allowed to travel outside of their country's borders until a time that they deemed suitable I was....very, very irked. Australia has a bit of a reputation amongst its own citizens to be a nanny-government to its own detriment, and this was no exception. But I really, really hated being told that I could not leave Australia's borders.

I mean, I hated it. I found myself being the "ugly American" whose reputation precedes all USA citizens who are lucky enough to travel abroad. I was really miffed at not being trusted to be able to make my own decisions about my health, or being trusted to do the right thing by my fellow citizens upon returning.

I was so miffed, in fact, that my wife and I began the process of applying to get her a green card to live and work in the USA so that eventually she could apply for - and hopefully gain - citizenship to the country. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I wanted to leave this country - of which I am now a citizen - and never return. But I wanted my wife to have the freedom to be able to travel with me to visit the rest of her family regardless of any pandemic-or-otherwise-related travel issues that might crop up in the future.

I just think that both of us having dual citizenship (which luckily we are each allowed to have) would help to make future travelling between our two home countries easier with whatever impacts future pandemics or climate-change-related issues might bring with them.

I think, if COVID has taught us nothing else, it is that nothing is guaranteed, and that putting as many preparations and protections in place as possible before something dire happens is a very, very good idea.

So, 2022, here we go. Year 3 of COVID and the start of the long waiting game of national-moving-related applications. Here's to focusing on remembering to enjoy the present moment between now and whatever the future may hold.

Missing The Greatest City in the World.....

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I'm back

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I don't know how really "back" I am in this space, but I know that I am back to myself. To the person that I was before I left New York, before my mind began to cause me physical pain, before I received medication and therapy and patience and grace.

I still miss New York but the life that I have built for myself here in Australia, the woman I love who is now my wife, the house we live in together, diligently paying down a mortgage I never thought we would be able to afford - and which we were able to afford thanks to the generosity of my parents and the luck and privilege of a deceased grandparent - is good. That mortgage - thanks to a down payment gifted per the former assistance - has perhaps lessened a good amount of my angst and stress, although in reading this previous posts this morning I think that it was the medication that has helped me most of all.

And I know that is not the case for everyone. That medication helps, and for them I feel heartbroken because thank god it was the case for me. And I am eternally, eternally grateful for feeling like myself again. I have always been a medication-taker, ever since I was put on the pill at 18 for acne. Perhaps it was stopping the pill, due to moving to a new country and not having a doctor for the prescription and not having healthcare coverage, and maybe mostly due to monogamously dating a woman. Perhaps it was stopping that pill and its hormone balancing antics that caused a chemical spiral which led, three years later, to my clearly, crystal clearly, feeling the desire to jump in front of a moving car one day as I walked home from work. Just so that I could feel something. And stop the numbness, and stop the desire to constantly sleep, and stop the wall in front of my eyes and my brain that blocked out all thoughts of future or goals or getting out from under the heavy cloud that sat on my chest and filled my brain and shrouded my eyes.

Perhaps it was that gradual hormonal re-adjusting, entering me into an adulthood totally without medical interference that allowed my brain chemistry to reach the point it may always have been intended to sit.

Perhaps it was leaving the city I had just begun to feel like I was making my own. Leaving the city that part of me always had wondered if I was strong enough to conquer, strong enough to exist in, strong enough to remain in. The ripping away of my long-held dream - and still held-dream - of owning a piece of that city, of knowing that I could always return and have a place to lay my head and have a home base that would be wholly and undeniably my own. In the city I had loved and dreamt of residing in since I was 14 years old. I am sure that leaving New York was part of my sadness and resentment, which festered into something more sinister. The fact that I still miss New York makes me think that surely leaving it was part of my struggle. But by no means was it the reason for my slide into darkness and depression.

Perhaps - and probably - it was a depression brought on by the PTSD-related issue of having been so completely fleeced and robbed by someone with whom I was toxically, intrinsically, irresistibly drawn towards. The first woman I ever felt attracted to, let alone dated and lost myself to, and was infatuated by beyond all reason and based on nothing of value. A woman who possessed an arrogance that I mistook for native New Yorker attitude, and who had the big, loud, loving family that I was probably missing from my native state, or perhaps had always sort of wanted, without the nagging feeling that the pride and love was based on grades and achievements and successes. When she possessed a family that embraced me immediately and was focused - with their blood relatives and life-long friends - on simply the entity before them. Of being their son, their daughter, their cousin, their relation, of that state being enough. The true and literal blood being thicker than water made flesh. Which I know I have always had and very much still have in that  native state of mine, but which I perhaps never possessed the innate confidence to believe and trust. That I was enough as I am, in all the variations and nebulous states that such a human manifests.

Perhaps it was a combination of all of these things. I don't know. And nearly three years after having started medication and therapy I don't care. I'm just glad that I have found a way out of that darkness and that weight.

And perhaps that's one of the reasons I'm hesitant to change anything else in my life right now, and perhaps that is why I have been able to find a sort of contentment in the "now" that I am living. I have never been a very "now" person. I have always been a future person. Do this to get that later on, secure this now in order to have a pathway in the future.

So I'm trying this thing of maintaining stasis. Just focusing on paying down a mortgage, consistently saving for retirement, maintaining my employment that is enjoyable at the moment 90% of the time. And trying to make sure that I remember as often as possible that I am lucky to be in a point of stasis, that I am lucky to be able to stay still. That so many are not so lucky. And so I am working on sitting in the new and maintaining contentment in that space.

And it is hard to bring my mind back when it starts trying to plan future things, but it is good for me to do hard things. So I'll continue.

Is this thing on?

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I am not sure if this site is still active, if I can still log in, if I still have anything of interest to say. But I am sure that yesterday I was having some feelings and I was wanting to say things, and I thought of this corner of the internet for the first time in over five years. So I decided to try it out and see what came of re-entering this little blog o' mine.....

working on me

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I don't know that this is important for me to say, or if I'll regret putting this out in public, but I am engaging proactively in my mental health. For the last three years, I have been dealing with some pretty severe periods of anxiety and depression. Whether this correlates directly to my move to a new country, or financial stresses that took place the year before I left New York, or was just something laying dormant in me forever that finally has worsened, I can't be sure. And I suppose it probably is a combination of each of these things. But I think it's time to figure out a better way to live with this.

For me, each of these periods of anxiety/depression mostly manifest themselves around work stresses of late. And while I have now dipped my toes into the therapy waters, I think it's time to get a single person to develop a relationship with, and to include a single physician into the discussion as well. I don't know if medication is something I need or would want, but I am not sure this effort is something I'll be able to take on just with working on changing my mindsets and habits. And in case medicine would help, I want to have a doctor who will have been with me through the whole journey of reaching that conclusion.

I think I am just putting this out into the internet as a means to keep myself accountable. And perhaps for me to look back at how things were after I've been immersed in working on my mental health a bit more. It's an exhausting, constant work-in-progress, to get through life. And if I can get some tips or tricks or pills that might help life feel less overwhelming, I'm ready for them.

choosing happiness

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Every time I think I'm getting better and more focused at choosing happiness lately, I seem to get derailed.

I had another breakdown about work last night to my partner (before a family party no less so I ended up puff-faced and bleary-eyed hugging it out with relations). And it's getting tiresome to her and it's getting worrying to me that the fear I've always had (that I'm too much for anyone to handle forever) might be true.

And I don't really think it's true. I know I'm worthwhile and loveable. But I also think that she is right, that finding happiness now needs to be the real focus of life. Not working for income to try to save for the future, and plan for retirement.

Except that I know that's not really true either.

Ensuring that we will be able to have money to suss out some kind of retirement lifestyle is important. The time will come when we will get old and not want to, or be able to, work at full-time jobs. Perhaps not even part-time jobs. Having a plan in place to have an income when that time comes is important.

So is having a place to live, that is not going to face ever-increasing rents or be at risk of a landlord deciding they no longer want renters.

A house and retirement savings. Those are the reasons that I stay in "business", stay in a job that causes me stress. Because I worry that stress is just how I function. That changing for a job that pays less, will cause me just as much stress, and will not provide me the extra income to set up savings for that one-day house or that one-day retirement.

Yet, to be honest, the thought of being able to afford property seems pretty near impossible. I don't know how to increase retirement savings and still save for property. And I certainly don't know how to save up the amount of money that it will take to get a mortgage. How old can you be before the banks cut you off, tell you they cannot give you a 20 year mortgage? Is 45 the cut-off age? 55? 35?

Most of the time I feel like I don't know what I'm up against. I feel like if I could just get a good plan in place then maybe I could relax. Seek out that happiness that everyone tells me I need to be seeking in the day-to-day, not in the someday-future. But those plans depend on a steady income, and a steady excess of income that provides savings. Which endlessly feels like I have to stay in these kinds of jobs.

But would this job, and those like it, not be so miserable if I felt less trapped? If I lessened the pressure I put on myself and saw a job as "the job I have right now" rather than "the job that I have to keep for the next 40 years if I ever hope to be able to leave it and have a place to lie my head for my golden years"? Clearly I'm putting a pressure and a panic on myself that other people do not feel.


I'm not sure how to stop. But I'm trying to get happy and focus on what I have now, be grateful. I feel like I've lost that ability, which is humiliating, to be honest.

trying again

So perhaps here I am trying again. Listening to a voice that has felt very silenced for a very long time. These past two years, adjusting to life in a new country that I was stubbornly uncertain about moving to in the first place, have been hard. Combine the general angst with my own standard sense of anxiety and you have what is close perhaps to a recipe for disaster. But I feel as though I have survived the worst of it, I feel as though I understand the bell jar scenario that Sylvia Plath wrote about, feel like I can understand an influx of blue sky and fresh air into a life that seems to have been lacking both for perhaps a long time.

It may help that friends from back home are starting to pick up and change locations, envisioning differences for themselves, new locations, new abodes. Feels now like everyone is starting to shift, like I am no longer missing everything that I left behind because what I left behind is slowly changing itself. It's easier to pull back out memories for a time, and put them back again knowing that they exist as a point in time. Rather than continually thinking about all of the memories that I was no longer making by being separated from the place (New York) and the people (everyone from San Diego to Philadelphia to New York to England) that I don't think I was at all ready to leave when I did go.

But I think that now, two years into this new life on a new continent, I am finally interested in getting to know this life, make a place in this city in this country. Experience what it has to offer. Rather than miss what I already knew my previous cities offered. I think I'm excited again. I think I'm sensing potential. In both myself and who I can continue to become. Here or anywhere.

I'm ready to feel like an adult again, instead of stuck in a fearful stubbornness that rendered me immobile. And hang onto this excitement for living instead of succumbing to some misguided belief that being an adult means feeling perpetually stuck.