Running away was very out of character for me, that was more my older sisters gig. I was quiet, super quiet as a kid. I read a lot, kept to myself and helped my mum around the house doing weird kind of husbandy things cos she had nobody else. My older sisters had their own lives so I was seconded as her daily helper in everything.
A Decision At Fifteen Shaped My Life
I don’t remember a lot of my childhood, so anything I share is snippets, snapshots. Wanting to become an exchange student was driven by a few different factors in my life. The biggest was an urge to escape, to get away from home, a place that wasn’t home for me but I don’t remember why.
I could make up a cute story to fill in the blanks, but the purpose of this post is to sit in that unknowing, to explore what my body feels when I talk about some of these things that are, many years later, shrouded in shadows.
The decision I made was that I wanted to be an exchange student and go to the US for a year and it was my first experience with manifesting my dreams. Unintentional, but effective.
What Was I Running From?
I don’t know. No really, It wasn’t until years later that I realised that being an exchange student, was simply a way of getting out of a house that I was unable to thrive in.
I was the youngest of three girls, my parents were divorced when I was almost five, and my two older sisters didn’t seem to like me very much. It could have been the tattle tailing, the closeness to my mum, who secretly adored the middle ballerina, or the way that my skin would crawl when my mother touched me.
What I did know was that I needed a change, and in my teenage brain it was a romantic, and exciting way to escape from a life that didn’t fit me, and was not allowed to speak about. It was her way or shut up. Nothing in between.
Silence Was Golden ESPECIALLY From Children
My mother died in 2014, and I hadn’t seen her apart from a few random drop ins to her house, for almost 40 years when she died. There is very little I remember from my kiddie years. Snapshots mostly that make no sense of a childhood that spanned years.
The strongest being that I had no voice except the one of my mother. Either agree or shut up. She didn’t use these words. but the rage or annoyance or even worse the disappointment sent the definitive message. My voice wasn’t welcome.
Getting Picked to Travel Was A Feather in My Nonexistent Cap
My peers at school saw me as a loser, the quiet kid at the back of the class. When I shared excitedly I had applied to go to the US, they sneered and taunted. I would never be picked. Only special people got to go, and that clearly wasn’t me.
This is the first remembered time that I swore, quietly to myself that I would prove those fuckers wrong. There were panels, and interviews and so many questions I had no idea how to answer. So I made it all up, I used my overactive creative brain to give them answers and they picked ME.
The next challenge was finding the money, my mother was no help, so I asked my grandmother and she came through like she always did, and three months later I was leaving on a jet plane, shitting my pants terrified. Something that has become a pattern. Throw myself off the deep end, and figure it out as I go, it works for me.
Returning Home from Evolution Was Excruciating
I wasn’t the same person when I returned, I didn’t even recognize me, that was a major turning point for me. I finally had broken free from my mothers domination. Though now I see it differently, she never coped with her divorce, having three young kids to raise, and the responsibilities of a mortgage.
I don’t hate, but back then I couldn’t live with her any more, her lack of communication and need for control was intolerable, I was no longer her meek follower and . Within twelve months of my return to Australia, I broke down and moved out and into a new adventure with a father I barely knew.
pEAce out