I realised on a whirlwind, 28-hour solo trip to Brisbane in March of last year for a close friends 50th birthday that I never really said goodbye to Brisbane. Not just to Brisbane, but to the whole life I had built there, and the person I was when I was living in that city for almost a decade.
I never processed the goodbye because I never anticipated it, and barely even realised it had happened.
When I temporarily moved to New Zealand in August of 2019 for a guiding season on the Milford Track, I didn’t know that I wouldn’t be coming back. I thought I might be gone for a year or two, maybe take off to Canada, but that I would eventually find my way home.
I figured it would be like all the other times when I went away on some big adventure, trying to find myself by chasing that next challenge, and I would return triumphant, exhilarated, but also just as lost as the time before. As I sat writing this in the window seat of my flight “home” to Melbourne last year, I realised that I never made a conscious decision to move away from Brisbane. I had always planned to come back and then Covid happened and before I knew it, Brisbane wasn’t home anymore.
I never got to say goodbye to or mourn the loss of a place that I called home for a long time; for most of my twenties really. It never really felt like “home” though. I moved there after uni, and although it was where mum was originally from, it never really felt like where I was “from” either; nowhere ever really has.
Being born in one place, spending most of my schooling years in another, then going to a whole new place for university before moving again for my grad program. I felt like I had lived in a lot of places but that I wasn’t actually from any single one of them.
Brisbane does feel a little different to the other places I “grew up” in. Going back last year to Brisbane for an express weekend visit on my own without my partner hit different. It was like I was transported back in time to my mid twenties. I found myself getting ready at my mum’s place to go out in the Valley like I used to when I lived there. Catching the 111 bus on the busway into the city the way I had done so many times before for work, or fun, or a night out… going out in “my city”, it felt like coming home. More so than I had felt in a long time.
Nostalgia: Pain and Happiness
I had this overwhelming sense of nostalgia on the bus as the towering concrete walls of the busway zoomed by with the greenery of the gardens tousled over the concrete edges of the high walls. I had a flood of memories, fond and otherwise come washing over me as I looked out the window over the bridge into the city. The river and the buildings all looked so beautiful in that soft end of day light, with the cityscape glistening on the water. Brisbane really was a beautiful city, and I had actually spent a long time here, being a lot of different versions of myself.
Brisbane might not be where I was born, or where I finally felt comfortable and like my true self, but it was home for those formative years in my twenties. Those years when I was perhaps the most lost and confused, the most alone, and when I struggled to work out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. When I felt the most pressured from myself and my own unrealistic expectations to work out where I was headed. But that too is part of the journey.
All we really are is an amalgamation of things that happen to us, the things we make happen, the choices we make, the people we encounter and let into our lives, and the places we exist in.
All of those tiny things continue to accumulate over a lifetime to make us exactly who we are. I don’t think I realised, or allowed, Brisbane to take up space in that process. I was so overwhelmed with emotion as I rode that bus into the city, realising how many times I had sat in that seat, how frequently I strolled along that exact river, or commuted into that same bus stop there under the city or at the Cultural Centre.
Starting Over and Over
This is where I did my grad program, young and bright eyed, driven and excited, wearing heels and sharp blazers, and lots of makeup, not realising that the corporate world would suck me dry and destroy me. That it would eat away at me slowly and make me question why I ever wanted a career in law in the first place.
This is where I struggled to build a network of friends at work, not just once, but in every single corporate job I had all those years. Forever the 20-something year old in a corporate team made up of people in their 40’s-60’s with wives, husbands, and kids at home. I was just at a completely different stage in my life to them and it honestly felt so incredibly isolating.
It is the place where I threw it all out the window and started over time and time again. A painful number of times really. But a necessary amount.
Finding new careers, people, relationships, and passions that were good adventures and fillers, but never quite felt right. But Brisbane wasn’t just the place of mistakes and do-overs. It was also the place where I found new and exciting things and started to learn about myself.
The Place of Good Too
Brisbane was the place where I finally had sexual experiences that I was in control of and wanted. Even if they weren’t exactly what I now know to be my sexual world and preferences, they were experiences I chose, and not just ones that happened to me and that’s what really mattered.
There were many, oh so many, amazing nights out dancing. Some of the best really. With friends, with my brother, with anyone who would be willing to stay out until the wee hours on the dance floor (including the friend I would forcibly make stay out until 4am too many times until she finally succeeded in her pleads to go home).
There were so many incredibly good house parties full of family, friends, dancing and singing with my brothers, mum and mates until dawn! Lots and lots and lots of board game nights. New hobbies, with new friends, and with amazing quality time with my brothers. Far too many nights out not knowing my alcohol limits. Or knowing them and pushing beyond them anyway with absolute disregard for my health and safety, not realising how much trauma was bubbling just below the surface, clawing to break out.
Nothing Was Ever Quite Right
There were partners who were never going to be right for me and who I for some unknown reason clung onto for so long. Who wanted to contain me, make me smaller and less than who I am; more controllable, less threatening and exciting, less me. The reasons they fell in love with me were the same parts of me they were trying to stifle out.
Brisbane was a time when I hated my body, my hair, my face, the way I spoke and interacted with people. I hated everything about myself. I was a chameleon, desperate to look and feel like someone else, like everyone else, anyone but myself.
There were also the people who made me laugh and reminded me that it’s never too late to make friends, and sometimes that you make them in the strangest of places. Finding a work wife who would end up being the reason for my whirlwind 28hr visit to Brisbane for this epiphany! The discovery of my love for hiking, even though it didn’t feel instantaneous, and I didn’t realise how permanently life changing it would be.
Long nights fighting demons of my own, and the demons of those closest to me. Fearing desperately for the potential loss of my brother, and mum, of myself and it all. Those were and still are some of the darkest and also brightest of times.
Finding my Independence
Then finding my own desires. My big adventures and goals. My independence. Realising I had to leave. I had to step away from it all and figure out who I was, what I wanted. To not be there for anyone or because of anyone. To not need anyone either. Find my voice and what makes me happy. Find my purpose in life.
To not be attached to anyone for a little while. Just be responsible for myself and find out finally what it was I had always been so terrified to realise, hear, and understand if I was left alone with my thoughts for too long.
Right when I thought I had figured it out was when the big dark would catch me by surprise. I would encounter the lowest of lows. But I had to go there. I had to find rock bottom, open the flood gates, and let it engulf and drown me, whilst burning me alive all at the same time. Endure the suffering, put the puzzle pieces together, look death in the eyes and accept all that had happened to me. Decide whether in light of it all I still wanted to be here. To my surprise, I did. But something had to change.
Build It All and Watch it Burn
I built amazing relationships and ended just as many. I finally found boundaries and started to stop apologising for being myself. I lost family and I gained new ones. I experienced some of my most reckless and self-destructive behaviour. I was testing the boundaries, pushing the limits. Finding my voice and my fragility.
I had been forced to grow up so quickly, and I was trying desperately to take my youth and innocence back. I had some of the most important reflections and revelations of my life. I wrote some of the most honest truths and discovered my past, as well as my potential futures.
I started down the road of self-acceptance where I stopped pretending and tiptoeing and masking so god damn much. Stopped caring so much about whether everyone liked me or accepted me and realised it’s okay to not be everyone’s cup of tea. You don’t have to be responsible for everyone else’s happiness all of the time (still working on this one…).
I needed to give myself a chance to figure out who I was under the mask. Not who I thought everyone wanted or needed me to be. But who I wanted to be, and who I really am. Brisbane, you were all the things; the literal good, the bad, and the ugly. You swallowed me whole, chewed me up and spat me out; and I emerged somehow stronger and weaker at the same time.
I felt like I built a life and detonated it on repeat for a decade, not realising that I did this so many times because the life I kept trying to build just wasn’t the right life for me. Always in such a hurry to get to where I was going, to figure it all out and reach my destination. Not realising it’s about the journey. Your 20’s are just so damning for this. You are set up to fail from the beginning.
The Gift of Your 30’s
You realise in your 30’s that there is no destination or finish line. There are just more days, more moments, more people; more happiness, loss, fear, frustration, wins, failings, and new beginnings. We never truly reach any sort of end goal or finality. It’s just a never-ending journey of growth and experiences; good and bad.
We are always going to be starting over, continuing, fighting, building, growing and figuring out who we are. There are no shortcuts, no quick fixes. There is no solution or handbook to this thing called life. We are just one tiny human on this enormous planet who is going about their life just like everyone else. While that sounds insignificant, every aching and rewarding moment of your own life is experienced uniquely by you and no-one else.
I now know that I never needed to put so much pressure on myself to have it all figured out. But hindsight is 20-20 and I couldn’t have done my 20’s any other way. I needed it to be like that. As has every other person who went through it and will go through it. It is a right of passage to adulthood, which I realise now doesn’t really start when you finish school or turn 18. It is an ongoing process that is never ending. It turns out that our parents and all those “grown ups” we looked up to didn’t have their shit together either. They were just living it one day at a time like we are now, and probably just as frantically.
I had to go through all that loss, struggle, and confusion, as well as the laughter, happiness, and fun to arrive where I am right now. To be who I am right now and to lay the road to becoming who I am going to be.
Apologies and Appreciation
I need to forgive Brisbane. To say sorry for filing it away in some deep, dark recesses of my mind where it feels like this foreign place that meant me harm. You were, are, and always will be part of my journey and I thank you for that. The scars that made me stronger, and the memories that bring me joy and happiness. I thank you for all of it.
I will no longer feel shame when I think or talk of you. I won’t cringe and give a soft and convoluted explanation as to where I come from. I will confidently say that a part of me is from Brisbane, and that’s the truth.
I may have never fully fit in when I was in Brisbane or truly found my people or myself there. But it served me well for what I needed at the time. A place to burn it all down to the ground and start over. To leave my mask behind and start new. Covid and lockdown in Melbourne may have been just as suffocating as the years in Brisbane were, but it was also necessary. It was what forced me for the first time in my life to stay somewhere, to push past the uncomfortable and to figure it out without running away. To put down roots.
New Beginnings
The life I’ve built here since the cloud of covid has lifted feels different. I can feel myself finding my voice again, my passion for life, desire for adventure, friendship, challenge, and the moments in between. I can feel myself emerging from the ashes. It sounds like a ridiculous cliché but I honestly don’t know how else to describe it.
I have found a new version of myself that is fierce, strong, and tenacious; but this time, not because I need to be, but because I want to be. And I’m realising that I can be all these things whilst also being vulnerable, fallible, and in need and accepting of love and support at the same time.
I’m lucky to be here, lucky to be alive, to have the life I’ve built for myself. I am so grateful for the friendships and community I have here in Melbourne, and around the world in all the different places I’ve lived, loved, and existed; back in Brisbane, in New Zealand, and scattered across the globe.
I am the most comfortable in myself that I have ever been, whilst also confidently knowing that I still have no idea who I am all at the same time. I am grateful to finally understand that it’s okay to not know, and to be forever changing, growing, and moving towards goals that will be continuously evolving.
Gratitude, Growth, Loss, and a Eulogy
Life isn’t always good, but it isn’t always bad either. It is the combination of things we experience throughout our lifetime that make up the human experience and I’m grateful to be a part of it. The good, the bad, and the downright wild, strange, and distorted. I’m here for it all.
This started out as a farewell to Brisbane, and it ended up a eulogy to my 20’s. A love letter to a version of me that no longer exists, but will forever be part of my journey and who I am. I shouldn’t hold so much shame for that place and that person, not always, and not for all of it. It is part of me, and I should allow myself to know that and understand what that means. To let it sit and take up space.
Thank you to my twenties, and for that past version of myself for surviving it. You had no idea what you had been through, what was coming, and what any of it meant and you did it all anyway. You died so that the new me could live, and I’ll be forever grateful for that. Here’s to the next million days of not knowing what the hell is going on, being in a constant state of growth and change, and savouring every damn second of it.
Love Caity.
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