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Image credit: Sitting by Lluisa Iborra from the Noun Project

I have been an extremely neglectful blog owner, I know.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's continue. I'm going back to Melbourne, officially. I've already experienced the excitement of it offline, of getting my visa finally, of booking my flights, of booking my air bnb and telling everyone I should tell, that I'm off, for good this time. I'll be back to London, of course, because I'm always back.

But also, many other things have happened. A close friendship I've been struggling to hold on to for almost three years, has finally started to crumble in front of my eyes. With this comes relief and massive heartbreak. I feel like I'm going through a divorce right now, but I can't really tell people that because maybe it sounds dramatic to speak of a friendship in that way. But that is how it feels, so that's how I'm speaking about it. It's over when you know you still love and care about a person, but there is nothing you can give to each other anymore; because all you do now is take something away, inadvertently hurt each other, watch as you both grow into people you don't recognise, and then play the staring game, waiting for someone to blink first. It was me, I blinked first. So that's a chunk of me that I'll be leaving here in London, that I know I'll never get back. Here's to finding a way to be OK about that.

So on to another thing. I have developed a massive crush on a friend. So staggering and life-altering that it continues to shake me, in the best and worst ways possible. It was a surprise to say the least, and feels like a thing I will continue to wrestle with long after I've touched down in Melbourne. It has also opened me up in ways I didn't think were possible, and made me realise I have never fallen for someone before where there wasn't a 'but' after everything that involved my feelings for them. There's no darkness here, no projected pain being thrown at me. Just a lightness from a kind-hearted soul, and I wonder often what would have happened if we'd interacted sooner. But I'm not one for looking back with regrets or forwards to what ifs (not unless there's a story involved). So for now I find myself riding the tumultuous wave of the crush, hoping it will carry me through to October 2nd, when I catch my flight.

A final thing? I've returned to therapy and my soul is being slowly rejuvenated. Reading that back, it sounds flouncy and dramatic, but it's also 100% the truth. It's not like it was; I'm no longer trying to solve the puzzle of me, I've moved beyond that. I'm trying to find the best ways to be in the world I've created for myself, to deal with new and big life changes that happen, and to be OK with them. My therapist is an actual Godsend and a bit of a savant, so I feel I lucked out there. She's made my time here so much more bearable.

So these are my truths at the moment; messy and heartbreaking and changeable and searing. A life update for the ages. Or something slightly less dramatic than that.