Total extra money spent to get me and my very heavy bags from South Haven, Michigan to Melbourne, Australia (including fees for changing my original flight, booking a flight from Sydney to Melbourne, and excess baggage fees): approximately 600 dollars. (Apparently you can bring your baggage with you to Australia but it will cost you).
Seeing the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge at dawn from the plane: well, not quite priceless, given the hours, dollars, and heartache it took to get me here, but pretty spectacular nonetheless.
Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge
It was that moment, in fact, when it first hit me where I was and what I was doing. It was that moment, when the plane turned a little to the left and I strained to see the view out of the tiny airplane window, that this adventure I’m living became real and was no longer just a foggy dream. It was after hours and hours of sitting on a plane in the very back row; after hours of fitful sleep spent still wrestling with the decision I’d made to come to Australia despite my change in plans, I realized I had arrived and, even if it was a decision I was still unsure about, I had no choice but to go through with it. As I followed the masses through customs and the baggage claim, though, the only thought my sleep-deprived brain could manage was, what the hell am I doing here?
I have been here a little over three days now. I’m settled into a cute townhouse in a really cool neighborhood called Richmond. And, yes, I realize describing it as “really cool” sounds a little lame but when I was walking around the other day trying to get a feel for the place, all I could think is how cool it is. There are shops and trains and cafes all within a short walking distance from my house, and for a gal who grew up in a small resort town, went to college in a corn field, and then moved to another small resort town, this kind of neighborhood is, well, just plain cool. I’m excited to be here, I’m excited to be somewhere so new, so cool. Still, though, that thought keeps surfacing, keeps plaguing me; what the hell am I doing here?
I can never decide if I believe in the concepts of fate or destiny. Sometimes I think they’re just ideas dreamed up by the romantics out there and they’re happy little thoughts but not totally realistic. But there are some times, like right now, when I find myself clinging to the hope that they must exist. I still feel like my life isn’t my own at the moment, like the real me is floating over this strange life and the only place I can find footing is in the idea that there must be some reason why I have found myself in this place at this time.
So I’m wondering what do you, my lovely readers, think about the concepts of fate or destiny? Do things really happen for a reason? When your life is turned upside down and sideways and spits you out in a direction you had no intention of going in, is there a reason for it? Or is that just something we tell ourselves to cope with change?
