Melbourne has grown dark by the time Hannah* and I step off the bus. In the shadows, we walk along the sidewalk as the occasional car passes by. In front of the National Gallery of Victoria, bright purple lights shine on a gurgling fountain, and we pause to take a picture as it casts colorful shapes against the side of the building. Crossing the bridge over the Yarra River, I try to take it all in. This is one of those rare moments I can see the city at night, when I otherwise feel safer at home, where I can look out my window and see the outline of a distant skyscraper.
I remark at how quiet it is, the lights from riverside restaurants casting everything in a subdued, warm glow. Together, we walk to the train station. We descend into the underground hallway that connects each of the platforms, and the fluorescent lights look down on us as we say goodbye.
“Keep in touch,” we say. As I walk up to my platform, I question the sense of loss I feel.
Hannah and I had met only a few times: once at an au pair meet up and then again to walk around the city before she invited me to join her and her host family for a trip to the beach to help babysit. Then, I invited her on a day trip to the Grampians National Park, where we spent the day hiking and sneaking up on kangaroos.
Her friendship crept up on me. There’d been no instant connection, no great amount of common interests to bind us together. Silence often punctuated our conversations. Yet we settled into a companionable silence and little moments of friendship. At the beach, we took a walk out onto a coral reef at low tide, and I told her to hold still while I snapped a photo of her. “Looks great,” I called, giving her a thumbs up. We walked along in silence, and I stepped up onto a large rock, looking out over the ocean. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her approach with her phone held up, trying to sneak a candid picture. I smiled inwardly and turned back to the water so she could get her shot.
The day at the Grampians, we’d been each other’s travel buddy, dutifully capturing moments for the day and silently sharing snacks during rest stops. In the few days after we said goodbye at the train station, she’d move away with her host family. She was a friend quickly gained and quickly lost.
***
Melbourne, like many a large metropolis, is a city of transience. With its high concentration of backpackers, tourists, and au pairs, people are frequently moving in and out. In the four months that I’ve lived here, I’ve made connections and said goodbye with the next breath.
It’s a fitting place to be, seeing as I’m in what’s supposed to be a season of transience. Friendships from college have begun to taper off, a process not aided by the fact that I’ve moved across the world. Friends have either moved off like me or have hunkered down for the long haul of a new career. Paths continue to diverge.
I used to agonize over this inevitability. I still sometimes do. It seems unfair to connect with someone only to have that relationship dwindle down to nothing. I invested in the idea of stability, hoping it could stave off the feeling that the rug could be pulled out from under me at any moment. Security could act as a thin veil over the undercurrent of anxiety.
So, when I moved, I had high expectations. I needed to find the right people. So many people asked why I moved to Australia, and I often told them I didn’t know. I had hopes, though. I hoped I’d meet good friends. I hoped I’d form a community. I hoped I’d make enough of an impression on people that they’d remember me when I left.
I began to lose hope as I began to meet people but felt no connection. Over coffee, I struggled to keep the conversation going, wondering if the silence from the person across from me indicated their disinterest.
I recently shared my disappointment with an elderly woman, who had made a point to get to know me. She was taking me out to lunch, and as we drove through the city, I shared how the moving to a new country and starting over hadn’t gone as smoothly as I expected.
“At least you’re showing up,” she pointed out.
I sat back against the seat of the car, absorbing the words. As our conversation moved forward, I kept the sentiment in the back of my mind, processing.
How often I did show up, but with an abundance of expectations. I tried to measure the length and worth of an experience before it began. I remembered having this realization three years ago, when I spent time in Bangkok, Thailand. I’d traveled there with one other student in the middle of our semester abroad, and we’d have the month to intern at an organization and live in the heart of one of the biggest cities I’ve ever visited. A month is both long and short. It’s enough time to feel alone but not enough time to feel truly known. Every effort to make a connection seemed marked by a preexisting expiration date. Vulnerability seemed wasteful, if not risky. Scarcity made me stingy and scared – in all areas of life.
In my writing, I also felt the looming pressure. I used to fill notebooks with words. Spiral-bound, college-ruled notebooks with the face of the latest teen heartthrob (in the mid-2000s it was Zac Efron) contained the scraps of my first novel. I loved writing in the early days, when the blank page was an invitation, not a threat.
I often wonder if this loss of wonder is an inevitable side-effect of growing up. When we’re young, we’re encouraged to experiment, to dabble, to create without consequence or worry of what will emerge out of our efforts. I made friends in a day without wondering if I’d lose them. I seemed to know that there’d always be laughter ahead. Haphazard poems still find homes on the fridge and indecipherable blobs of paint (a still life of family), still receive acclamation. I surprised my parents with the first story I’d ever written and had bound to look like a real book. I handed it to them proudly, not caring about the series of inconsistencies and spelling errors I’d overlooked. I wrote the book out of joy, in a season of life before I truly learned to fear imperfection.
Since then, I’ve tried to force the story out through a response to fear, which turns to urgency, and urgency demands that I produce now; if I don't, my life and dreams will pass me by. Sometimes I need that reminder. The thought that I might waste my whole life pursuing something I don't love can give me a kick in the pants. But to live my whole life with the frantic belief that until I produce The Thing, I haven't reached my full potential is to operate under a controlling mentality. It functions on force rather than grace. It doesn't allow for the epiphanies that materialize in the spaces between movement and noise.
Stillness and silence act as necessary absences that buffer the rhythm of life from becoming racket. In the union of discipline and inspiration, I can show up not knowing the discoveries I’ll make.
I thought of the woman’s words – to show up – and how I needed to make them true. Here I was making calculations, forming strategies, all to mitigate the risk, when the connection I desired could be distilled into the simple action of saying yes.
Showing up. Letting the silences linger. Wading into what at first appeared uncomfortable but what could be experienced as a calm quiet. I realized the gift, both offered and received, in showing up as oneself and the grace that emerges from the ability to be and just let others be. To not expect the world from one person but to marvel with gratitude at the miracle of connection. That of all the people in the world, you’ve intersected with this one, for however brief a moment.
In story and in life, the moment will emerge, coaxed by gentleness, not force. And so, I show up: humbled, yet expectant. The mere act of presence builds momentum. There waits before me a great expanse of unknown, but I choose to see it as a discovery and wade in with expectation, not anticipation, that the obscure will yield to an abundance of intricate details.
With my need for stability and certainties, I have a limited capacity for such grace. But it is growing. What I surrender in a change of posture from certainty to mystery is a result-based fixation. I change from a focus on the future to one on the present. From end goal to the act of dwelling. From conclusions to questions, which persuade me to unfurl my fist full of self-composed answers, and receive something else entirely.
Elisabeth Ivey writes literary non-fiction and young adult fiction. She has contributed to The Odyssey and Messiah College’s The Swinging Bridge, and she has presented research on representation in youth literature at the PA NAME and IMAGINE Social Good conferences.
*Not her real name.