2019

Strap in everyone, you’re in for an emotional rollercoaster of a blog post.

Not that I’m emotional now, but it’s just been a very high emotion three (four?) weeks since I last wrote. Some of you are already very aware of this – for that, thanks for hanging in there as I thrust mental breakdown after mental breakdown upon you.

Going home was amazing. And although the journey back was pure hell (five flights in two days will NEVER happen again), it was well worth it. I got to see my good friend Kailen in Vancouver during my nine hour layover and then getting home to see Rachel, Mom and Mazy at the airport was just the biggest relief in the world. And by some miracle, my bag made it through five airports along the way, praise the Lord.

At some point during Christmas, we realized it had been five years since all four siblings were home for the holidays, which is wild. It felt very much like a homecoming and it was so comfortable. I missed family dinners and sleeping in my old bed and seeing the famjam (not to mention homemade meals, shout-out to the parentals).

I did find myself having a lot of the same conversations, but I suppose that comes with the territory of having moved across the world; people are curious as to how it’s going. And I found myself lying a bit – “it’s good, I love it, I’m where I’m meant to be, blah blah blah.”

Truth is, I think I was trying to convince myself more than anyone else. Because in the back of my mind, I still wasn’t really sure how it was going. Was I happy? Did I love it? Am I where I’m supposed to be? These tiny questions kept nagging at my mind, but I tried to pay them no heed. Instead, I allowed myself to fall into the holidays and enjoy being home and relaxing.

When the ten days at home came to close, I was devastated. I felt like I hadn’t had enough time with everyone, particularly the parents. It became overwhelmingly clear that I didn’t know the next time I would see them and that realization crushed me. Because, when I first arrived in NZ, I always had the Christmas holidays in the back of my mind, “it’s not a big deal that I’m moving across the world, because I’ll be back in two and half months.” That phrase became a kind of security blanket, and now the security blanket was gone.

However, I left Halifax, flew into Whistler and again, those nagging thoughts evaporated. I was so excited to see my friends and go out to the bars that I know and get to ski.

And Whistler was amazing. I stayed overnight with a bunch of different people, got to do NYE and see a ton of faces, Sushi Vill with the GLC crew, the works. And I began to dread the thought of coming back to NZ. Because at the time, I was existing in a Whistler vacation world, where I didn’t worry about money, or work the next day, or any of the mundane day-to-day nuances that used to plague me when I lived there. It was idealistic. Which would be problematic.

The night before I left to come back to NZ, I got punched with a terrible flu. I hurled all night long and the next morning, woke up to 30cm of snow on the ground. So in the midst of the drama of having to book a bus to get down to the airport and still being horribly sick, I didn’t really have time to think about being sad. Again, the feelings got pushed to the side.

And as I made my way across the world again, all I could focus on was how many hours I had to wait before I took my next hit of my Tylenol/Advil/Gravol cocktail of drugs.

So when I finally got home and cozy in my bed in NZ, I passed out.

And woke up the next morning bawling. And then I did that everyday for five days.

I’ve never been that homesick in my life. I’m not sure if it was because it was partnered with jetlag and my lingering flu, but holy shit, it was debilitating. I didn’t want to get out of bed, I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to work. I would get to the office and have to go to the bathroom to cry. And I couldn’t even pinpoint why.

Did I miss Whistler? Yes, but not in the way that I wanted to move back. Did I miss Halifax? The town, no. But the comfort of home, yes. Did I miss my family? Hell. yes.

And I think the constant distraction and the putting-off-facing-my-dread finally came crashing down.

Now, I’m being quite honest here. Part of me wants to delete the whole bit about me crying at work. But, I’m not writing this to emphasize my sadness, or call attention to the drama or even to get attention. I really need to write this down for myself. I need to remember how awful this was and how badly I wanted to pull the plug on Mons, NZ, everything – and go home. I was looking up flights, I was setting deadlines for when I could finally make the decision to leave. If not for several key people telling me to give it more of a chance, I would’ve up and left that week. I need to remember all this.

Because I got through it. And it all got so much better and by the following Monday, I was feeling amazing again; feeling like being here brought with it so much possibility.

And don’t ask me how it switched. It happened almost in an instant.

Earlier in the week, one of the girls at work, Lottie, had invited me to go ride Cardrona Bike Park that Friday after work. And by the time Friday rolled around, I had no motivation to go ride bikes (that’s how sad I was). But I dragged myself out, telling myself that it would be a distraction. And then I had the most amazing evening.

Cardrona was awesome. It was a different kind of riding than I had previously experienced. The mountain was a lot more exposed and the trails were very rocky and alpine-like. But it was so fun. We met up with a group of other chicks riding and just had this cool little girl gang of riders. After the lifts stopped spinning, we all went for beer and pizza. And that was it, of all sudden, I was back into it again.

The next day, Saturday, Lottie invited me along for a float down the Clutha River with her and few others. We managed to wrangle a stand-up paddleboard for me (that I spent most of the time sitting down on) and off we went. The Clutha is a big, wide river, but is pretty mellow for most of the three hours that we were on it. There were small rapids along the way, but all perfectly manageable. We also had to keep an eye out for motorboats and those river jetboats along the way. But mostly, we were by ourselves, leisurely floating, sipping beer, eating chips and listening to music. It was heavenly. It really reminded me of when we used to float down the river at the Lodge too.

There was a moment when we were floating, where I just realized that everything was going to be okay. And in that moment, I was just so content and at peace for the first time in days, that I wanted to cry of happiness. (Spoiler alert: I cry a lot).

As we reached the part of the river that we had dropped off our second car, we found a little swimming hole and stopped to play for a bit. Seriously, is this heavenly or what?

Then Sunday came along. My friend from the GLC, Erin, had virtually introduced me to her friend Evelyn before Christmas and Ev and I had gone out for a beer before I left to go home. So when I got back, I reached out to her to see if she wanted to meet up again. On Sunday, the plan was to go outdoor rock climbing, but then it was so rainy that we couldn’t, so instead we went to the indoor wall here in Wanaka.

Holy shit. I’m hooked. It was so much fun. It’s such a work-out, both mentally and physically and there’s such a high when you “solve the problem” ie. get to the top of the wall. I got home and immediately started a hunt for secondhand gear.

The next week at work, I was back with a vengeance. Suddenly, I wanted to be there so desperately. I wanted to throw myself into every project and really start to understand how the business worked. It was good to feel like my old motivated self again. I also started going for runs in the evenings and getting out trail riding. I almost felt bipolar – how did I go from being so miserable to loving life again?

In an effort to truly embrace that I’m here for a while, I started car hunting. And after a couple of duds, I finally found my winner. Meet Brendan.

He’s an adorable little station wagon that I can fit my bike into the back of and hopefully get up and down to Cardrona (the road is hell). Either way, he’s opened up a world of freedom for me and I’m so excited to now begin exploring NZ.

So that brings us to this weekend. On Friday, Lottie and I went back to Cardrona for the TGIF evening sessions and I bought a season pass (guess I’m all in). We met up with a few others that I had met once or twice and it was great to actually get to know people. Pizza and beer followed of course. I think these sessions on Fridays are going to become a thing.

Yesterday, it was so rainy and awful, but I often find that when I’m feeling uncomfortable in a place, it helps to nest. And because I’m a freak, my favourite way of nesting is going on a huge organization spree. So I re-organized our laundry room, all of our storage closets (x3), the spare bedroom (which was basically a dumping ground for all of our activity shit), my bedroom and the living room. And then I vacuumed. Sometimes OCD comes in handy.

Finally, today. Evelyn invited me along with a crew of people who were going climbing at Hospital Flats, an area for rock climbing about twenty minutes outside of town. I wasn’t nervous before we got there, but when we finally got to the wall and set up shop, it all got real. The fact that you’re literally climbing a wall, in the middle of nowhere with only the other person and your equipment keeping you from certain death. Whoa. It was wild. But I had bought a harness earlier that day, and at that point, I figured I was committed. None of the below photos are of me climbing – it’s Ev and her boyfriend. But just to give you an idea of what we were doing…

Those photos are about forty feet in the air by the way. It’s hard to tell because I zoomed in to take them.

I didn’t make it near as far up as they did. It was really windy and it kind of freaked me out. I’d say the highest I got up was about twenty feet. But I’m hooked for sure. And I’m determined to get better.

Afterwards, we all went over to one the crew’s place for some tea. Climbers get a notorious rep for being hippies and in some cases, I would agree. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Climbing with everyone today was so awesome because it was very social. There’s no feeling of competition and no one makes you feel like you have to do anything. It’s a very relaxing environment to learn in, which seems ironic, given the high consequence of getting something wrong. But I never felt belittled or stupid and no one tries to be a hotshot. It was very cool. I’m hoping to get out again with Ev and some of the girls this week.

And that was my last two weeks. You might get what I mean now by that bit about it being a rollercoaster of emotion. And yes, I still miss everyone back home dearly. But I’ve kind of sunk into a place where I’m able to acknowledge those feelings are there and then continue to move on with my day and do things that make me happy. It feels good. And it feels good knowing that I didn’t let that homesickness drive me to making what would’ve been one of the worst decisions of my life; to go home.

Thank you to everyone still reading (I know it’s a long one) and thank you especially to everyone that put with my constant sobbing calls and reached out via text. It meant more than you know just to have that comfort and that bit of pushing, when all I wanted to do was give up. I’m glad I didn’t.

• JB