Simplification

Well.
Here I am.
Montréal.
Permanently.
Finally!

Actually, I've been here for three and a half weeks now, but I have been suffering transplant shock and have barely been able to bring myself to write emails, let alone a blog post. Don't get me wrong, I love it here. I love it more every day, and Charles is just the best darn husband a girl could wish for. But I did recently give up at least 90% of my possessions, my house, my car, and a job of eight years, not to mention again all the goodbyes I've said to loved ones in the last couple of months. I've been vacillating between being emotionally exhausted and like a kid in a lolly shop as I've been exploring my new home in far greater depth than I've had a chance to previously.

I also find my life refreshingly simplified.

I haven't got a job - haven't even started looking yet to be honest - but settlement did come through on the sale of my house so I could hold out for a year if I was willing to fritter away my life's savings. Without the job and the house I am also released from some of the more mundane financial facts of life: the mortgage, house repairs, home and contents insurance, income protection insurance, car insurance etc. etc. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... And to be honest I am not missing the stresses of my old job one bit. The woman who two months ago was ranting and raving about government funding cuts, AWOL project partners, interminable grant reporting procedures and budget adherence is now spending her days on the swing at the park, dreaming up what she's going to cook for dinner while she waits for her stepson to finish making new friends. Or spending three and a half hours walking to the Mont-Royal, up it, down it and back again before lunch. Or stumbling across super-cheap Chinese/Portuguese supermarkets in unexpected places. Or potting out a balcony herb garden. The only ranting and raving that's been going on has been at the squirrels for digging up my rocket seeds twice.

I still don't think I'm down to a baseline heart rate after the last few months, but I'm getting there. I'm making the time to look after myself and relaxing, eating well, exercising and enjoying life with my beloved after three years of being in a long-distance relationship. It's not often in a First World life that you get to untangle yourself so much. It always takes something drastic like an international relocation, or a number of much less pleasant scenarios. That or a conscious drop out. I'd be lying if I said I didn't occasionally hear a desperate voice in the back of my brain screeching, "Stalled superannuation contributions!!!!" But it's early days yet, eventually I'll get a bit bored and start looking for a challenge, or a complication, or a bit of stress.

But not just yet.

Resistance is useless

Image: BBC

When I was young, Doctor Who was on the ABC every weeknight before the news. I loved it, but like so many other children, it scared the bejesus out of me. I probably saw more of the palms of my hands than the television screen and, yes, I did resort to the cliché of hiding behind the couch. Looking at the hyper-realistic costumes above it is clear why I would have been so terrified!

My segue here is fear. Fear and the bizarre effect it can have on us.

This week has been enormous. On the weekend I realised that a recent Australian interest rate cut meant that renting my house was a viable Plan B if it didn't sell in the near future. Ergo: I no longer have to wait for the house to sell before moving to Canada. Tuesday night and Wednesday morning I booked my flights. Today I resigned from my job. The really fun part was finding a flight that allows for a stopover in Tokyo. The hardest part was pressing the button to commit to buying the first flight; I must have sat there for nearly ten minutes, aware that that one action would push me past the point of no return. On the flipside I know from bitter experience that an international flight can increase by hundreds of dollars in the course of a couple of hours, so I was also nervous that if I didn't commit this week - that day - I'd lose the one reasonably priced combination I'd been able to find for the month-long window of departure dates I'd been searching. Up until then all the one way flight connections I'd seen were more than my entire return ticket to Montréal in February.

Yet there I was, a woman with a fully formed, timed and costed-out plan and a husband to get to, hesitating. A whole new, exciting world of experiences and opportunities lies before me, with a gorgeous man to lie beside me, and yet the chatter in my brain, the resistance to letting go of my current life, the sheer physical difficulty in pressing-the-goddam-button-already, was astounding. I was paralysed with fear in the face of enormous change, despite the fact that the change is something I want so very badly. In the end, obviously, I gave myself a mental slap across the face, came to, and just pressed the bloody button!

Today I drove into work knowing that, again, an irrevocable action was about to take place. I feel a deep sense of loyalty to my organisation and I love my co-workers dearly, I feel bad about leaving them at a difficult time in the face of sector funding cuts and a tough art market. Telling my boss, in fact, was nowhere near as bad as telling my co-workers, even though we've all known this day would come for quite a while. Still, I had heart palpitations when I made an office-wide announcement.

But why? Why, with the prospect of moving to a major international city full of art and culture and good food, and where they speak both French and English, to be with the man you love, could there ever be a hesitation? I get to reboot my life completely, transferring across only those files I choose (though no doubt there'll be a few lurking Trojans!) Every time I get a heart pang at the thought of leaving my house, every time I fear that I'll be unemployed for the rest of my life, every time I see a Ulysses butterfly and wonder if that will be the last one I ever see, should and will be a time to get excited about all the new things that are to come and that could never happen here, will never happen if I stay. I won't be too hard on myself if I catch myself grieving, but I will reprimand myself if I find I am getting resentful of the reasons Charles can't come back here, or if I am clinging too hard to things that are ultimately of lesser importance – tin foil and pipe cleaners all of it, just like the costumes in the image above. Because resistance to change, fear of change, can make you hide behind the couch even when you are a grown up.


P.S. Unlike a number of my friends, I haven't been able to get into the latest incarnations of Doctor Who and its offshoots. I haven't watched a full episode since the fifth Doctor.

Happy Easter! Here's to celebrating (a) new life!

Things you might not have known about me, part 1: When I was a child I used to hoard my Easter eggs, whereas my brother had usually inhaled his by Easter Sunday evening. I would then slowly savour my stash over the following weeks, generally right in front of him to his great distress and my great amusement. I used to imagine that I was such a good girl, but really I was just as much of a little shit as the best of them!

I love Easter. It has always been my favourite of the seasonal holidays. It's much calmer and less loaded with expectation than the Christmas/New Year period. It's a good time to rest and recharge: for getting lost in a good book with a little pile of Easter eggs or buttered hot cross bun nearby; for going camping; or for doing what I'm up to this time around – pottering around the house doing some fix-its. Also, Charles and I started seeing each other over Easter three years ago, almost to the day, so that has further added to its charm.

Easter's metaphor of resurrection/rebirth/the-renewal-of-the-cycle-of-life gets a little confused here in the Southern Hemisphere, but I'm very happy to run with it this year because my Canadian permanent residency was approved this week.

Whoo.
Hoo!

It certainly feels very good to finally be able to put long-held plans into action. It's a little daunting, too, I'll admit. For the next few months I'll be sprucing up the house for a hopeful sale (yes, I made up my mind, here's hoping the market agrees with me), auditing all my possessions into keepers, sellers and those to be filed in the bin, squirreling cash, spending as much time as possible with friends, and winding up work, hopefully by the beginning of June. Phew!

I'm not much good at drawn out goodbyes, I prefer the Band-Aid method – walking out the gate and not looking back with absolutely no fuss or ceremony. But that's not necessarily fair on others, nor would it do justice to the incredibly curious time I have had in Cairns and all of the amazing things it has given me over the last nine years. This has been the most stable period of my life. I've worked for the same company for nearly eight years, worked in the same building for the entire nine years in fact, and I've only lived in two houses if you don't count the early months with the then-boyf's parents. Previously, I could look back every few years and the whole landscape had changed: different job, study, house, area, boyfriend, all completely changed every two to three years. Reminding myself that this kind of change used to be my norm is certainly helping in psyching myself up for the next few months. Before I go I'll find ways to honour all that has been and the natural beauty that is here, but I'll stave off sadness with the thought of all the potential lying in wait in Montréal, not to mention one rather dashing Québécois librarian.


P.S. For those of you who are curious about such things, I applied for Canadian permanent residency under the spouse category. My residency has been approved, but I still have to wait another couple of weeks to get the visa in my hot little hand. Canadian Immigration estimates that for Australians applying for this category from outside of Canada, processing should take nine months, but once my visa arrives it would have been about five months since we put in the application. Much faster than expected, but then, we are a very straightforward case ...