Suze Returns

There are only 61 days left until I touch down at Melbourne airport. Yes, my return to the Land of Oz is imminent.   In many ways I feel just like Dorothy.  I’ve had great adventures, made loyal friends, fought dramatic battles with wicked witches and had many moments where I’ve wanted to click my heels and wake up at home.   But now that I’m actually going home I wonder how it will turn out.  I’m not the same person I was when I arrived here 5 years ago.  Sure I’m older, a little wiser and have acquired a quiet confidence that I can handle anything.  Yet I’ve also come to know a darker side of the human psyche.  

I first witnessed it in myself.  The cringe worthy raw desperation I felt, the compromises I made for the acceptance that never came.   It was humbling but I learned from the experience and can (sometimes) look back and laugh at my own ridiculousness.   

It’s the ugliness I saw in others that still haunts me.  I’ve made no secret here of the conflicts I’ve had with some in-laws, one of Jarno’s acquaintances and even one of my own friends.   Perhaps it was that same desperation that lead me into relationships with people I would have avoided like the plague in a more rational time.  I try earnestly to write it off to insecurity, fear or just plan group behaviour yet even with the perspective of time it offends my basic sense of fairness. 

Even scarier, I now question my old assumption that whatever people do it’s coming from a good place.   

Are you scoffing right now?  Do you want to yell  

“Earth to Suze…  no life isn’t fair and people do suck. You are 29 how can you not know that?” 

To be honest with you I didn’t know that.  I came here young and innocent, looking for love and the adventure of a lifetime.  There’s no doubt I found that, I just wish I hadn’t ended up a little jaded along the way.