And From Back Home...

Over the last two months as I went about my daily business in Italy like it was nothing new, words were forming around at the back of my mind. Somewhere alongside the memories of New Zealand, of surfing with my brother, ugly sweater parties, constant drives to the Stomach to plug in my guitar and get lost in the music, of the desire to leave....

Somewhere alongside these, words like "Leaving", "Home" and, most frighteningly, "What's next?" were already starting to rear their heads. Caught in the moment, I'd put them to the back of my mind and stay busy with living. Yet in the moments of quiet: on Via Monte Zebio when no one was home, at night when I was trying to sleep, and most often when walking back home from Bar 77 in the cold, they'd push their way forward until they were right on the tip of my tongue. And they'd leave me feeling paralyzed because quite frankly, I couldn't imagine life outside of Italy.

Four months is a frustrating length of time to do ANYTHING, let alone study abroad. My friend Kayla wrote about this a lot better than I ever could (which you can read here) , how all of a sudden you can go from arriving to leaving, and how it felt like it was too soon to go. I can't really add much to that, because it's seriously one of the best things I've ever written. This one will be a lot more scatter-brained, because, even though its been over a month since I left Europe, I'm still trying to figure out what it all meant. And I'm still asking myself the same questions....

I've never been good at saying goodbyes. The one in Viterbo on a cold Friday night was no exception, but it proved to be a lot harder than I was expecting, knowing these were people I absolutely loved, some of my best friends and we had to go back to living on opposite sides of the planet.

Despite having such great views, life in NZ sucks sometimes. 

But every time you go somewhere, every time you take that next step, you have to leave something behind. To go to Italy I had to leave my band, my family, my church - everything I knew and was comfortable with to pack it all up and head to the other side of the world. Similarly coming home I had the same thing in reverse - leaving my new friends, new apartment, new language and new culture I'd somehow manage to work myself into in the short space of four months.

Still wishing I didn't have to leave these guys behind.

It should feel like starting over again. I wrote a song before I left with the line "Adventure is calling me, far across the sea to another time, another place...". Where you are can be as much of an adventure as you make it. As one of my best friends Leo told me, a lot of people explore and travel a lot but never really stop to look around their own area. While he was referring to Viterbo, I suddenly realised the statement kind of held true for me - there's so much of my own country I have yet to experience (and surf!). So despite the mess my head's been in since I stepped off the plane in Wellington airport and it all just stopped, I'm excited to see just WHAT New Zealand has to offer me. At least for the next little while.

Because I promised I'd be back.

At least 50% because I miss views like this.

But until then, its figuring out what to do next, in order to live and save enough to make it back over. Plane tickets sadly don't come cheap! Yet while its necessary, it's so damn draining trying to even decide how to go about it.

Morgan, my best friend in Italy and one of my favourite people in the entire world, once gave me a piece of absolute wisdom one night when we were walking home. I can't remember her exact words, and I left my journal with the proper quote in on a bus in Florence, but it was something along the lines of how I was afraid to live in the everyday, ordinary parts of life. It's been something I've thinking about a lot since I've been home, especially on the days when everything's just seen so flipping boring. 

Miss this homie and her great advice! Even if she's the reason this post so long coming because we were supposed to skype and blog at the same time, a feat of extreme measures WAY hard to organise when you don't hang in the same time zone.

[Side note: I really should just give up my derailed train of thought here, and finish this post with some more gems of wisdom from my extremely quotable friends.] 

"Insert joke about America/your mum/something else hilariously inappropriate" - Bryce, one of said quotable friends.

I couldn't write this post in Italy, I couldn't write it in Germany, and I couldn't write it for the last three weeks of being back home in New Zealand, despite having all the time in the world. But now it's time to start writing again, start doing things, start finding out what 2016 looks like for me, and start living again.

I wrote this down on a physical piece of paper the other day (because I'm hip yo and I like keeping it oldschool sometimes), and I want to finish with it:

"Europe started out with a step, which turned into a mountain of frustration and paperwork, which turned into a song, which turned into a plane ticket, which turned into the best time of my life. And now all that's waiting and up in the air - all that is similarly only a step away.

It's like coming up from a crashing wave on my surfboard out there in the place we call the "impact zone", where all the waves are dumping down on you. You've just come up, beaten, grasping for air and with your salt-drenched hair hanging down over your eyes. Already a second wave is looming, too close behind the wave which just absolutely wrecked you. In that split second, it's all about the pause - or the lack of it - which determines the rest of the surf. You either hesitate too long and get smashed by another twenty sucker punches to the gut, or you  push the hair out of your eyes and gun it, pushing yourself to the absolute limit just to get over that one wave.

And here, in re-entry, I've got to make it over the wave. I need to make the new feeling of uncertainty transform into feeling alive once more. To push for the new pastures and wide open seas ahead, to long for something and chase it, to travel where I am now and not just where I have been,

And if all else fails, give me a guitar and 365 days, and Europe I'm coming back.