We are just 23 days away from our flight to Australia. At this point it seems as if everyone else is excited on my behalf. I’ve slowly been coming to the realisation that I’m feeling a lot of grief over what I’m leaving behind. It’s a difficult place to be, because on the one hand I rationally know I should be celebrating the massive accomplishment of having achieved our long-term goal of being able to move our family back to Australia. That was a crazy, intense, expensive, long process that is about to come to fruition. However, on the other hand I’m really not ready to accept that it is happening, primarily because this move means leaving behind my best friend. Frankly, that part of it really, really sucks.

Here’s the thing about my experience with friendship; finding a best friend is pretty darn close to the search for your life partner. You build relationships where someone will have a lot of the traits you are looking for, but it’s not quite the perfect fit. Or, you will really like them, but they don’t really feel the same way about you. Way too many times in the past I’ve had the experience of: She’s my best friend but I’m not HER best friend. How nice it is to have someone who genuinely considers you their best friend!

So when you take in to account that my search for a best friend has been a lifelong effort, perhaps you can understand my reluctance to accept that I have knowingly chosen to leave her behind. Again, that part really, really sucks.

Here’s the plus side. Accepting that our friendship isn’t going to be as readily accessible anymore, has lead to a greater appreciation of that friendship. I’ve been blessed to be able to move in with my best friend and her family for our last few weeks in Canada. We are cramming in as much memory making time as we can. After that it’s a matter of making the commitment to not let the physical distance put distance in our friendship.

This quote pretty much sums up how I’m trying to feel:

Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. – Dr. Seuss

p.s. It’s not over, darn it!

 Image source: Bohemian Prints

My life feels as if it has been comprised of moments of ‘how am I going to get through this’, followed by a quick fast forward and puzzled realization that I survived the challenge and a how about that! 27 years of getting to know this person I am and I still regularly underestimate my abilities to get through and cope. I’ve slowly started to come in to this stage of begrudging self-pride. Less ‘I think I can’ more ‘Can I do this?’ to ‘I somehow did it!’. Now I am using the knowledge that I’ve made it through certain things as the assurance I can make it through the next.

I’m fairly confident that I’m embarking on a big adventure. I’m gradually allowing myself to feel a little bit of pride about having made this possible, of being at the point where next month we will have achieved this massive long-term goal.

Moving back to Australia isn’t a small thing for me. I left the country when I was 19 and a newlywed. I’ll be returning a month before my 28^th birthday, having been married for eight years and now having two children. That’s just a drop in a bucket. To say that I’ve changed from the person I was in 2004 is a vast understatement.

We decided to sell all of our belongings and start over, partly because the cost to ship everything would be more than what it’s all worth, partly because we really want to start over with nothing. Minimalism appeals to me, less so than it does to my husband. I think for him he just can’t stand an excess of toys and not being able to find things when we need them. So at this point we are planning on taking four large bags and four carry-on bags. That means fitting the past 8 years of my life in to one bag, for my husband it’s his whole life. Funny thing is that his suitcase is currently not even a quarter full and mine is stuffed and overflowing! Who do you think is the more sentimental of the two of us?

We are less than a week from moving out of our house, which has sold. This weekend we are selling the rest of our stuff that we aren’t taking with us. I still can’t quite believe we are at that stage.