Lately my head and my heart have been really, really heavy. I feel a little like I am mourning but not in the traditional sense.
Right now, my appetite for wanderlust is ravenous and despite pinning beautiful images from all over the world it is still not satisfied. My head is swinging between get-the-kitchen-floor-swept and let’s-jump-on-a-plane-and-fly-away, baby. I am yearning for a life a long time ago. A life before the kids and mortgages and monotonous domesticity.
When I was living in London with the hedonism of Europe freely at my feet, I got up the duff with my eldest. Immediately my heart needed to be home so I dragged the Baker back to Australia and more importantly back to my G-Town. Life has been truly amazing. There have been some incredible ups and shattering lows but I really cannot complain. My bucket is full to the brim with gratitude, happiness, family, love and full on emotions.
Yet despite this grass is greener fire in my belly I am fiercely and acutely aware that my own little patch of lawn is more than fabulous. But I feel that I am not ready for the life that it brings. Yes, that is completely contradictory and ironical (thanks Robin Williams) but it is true…I am not ready.
I am not ready for the relentless monotony of child rearing.
I am not ready to answer the hard questions that my kids are starting to ask.
I am not ready to manage the joy and the pain of life’s highs and lows.
I am not ready for the incredible pull of responsibility and mortgages and life.
I am not ready for the reality of looking after ageing parents.
I am not ready to deal with looming teenagers and hormones and worse, my own tumultuous ride as I catapult towards pre-menopause and beyond.
I am not ready to accept that my life is school runs and swept floors and washing and bossing.
I am not ready to see greying hair and drooping body parts or to feel my aching joints.
I am not ready for life and death and well, just being a part of the terrifying reality of it all.
But it is here. I am living with it. We are all living with it. Living with the beauty and the fabulous and a whole lot of humdrum that is punching me squarely between the eyes.
Perhaps if I stop yearning for stamps in my passport and a life before children then my present will appear just as amazing. A daily itinerary of bed making and laundry and meal preparation with a long haul flight into sleep deprivation. I know deep down that it is exactly what I want but the speed at which life feels like it is moving? Well I just want to sail away, honey. {I do heart White Ladder by David Gray. So many angsty pre kid lyrics on that album right there.}
Where are we without our dreams?
Without my dreams I would never have imagined a life free from the ravages of anxiety; where managing my head becomes my every day instead of a heartbreaking and life interrupting chore. Without my dreams I would never have been gifted with four beautiful children and an amazing husband. Without my dreams I wouldn’t be right here, right now. I wouldn’t be dreaming of anything.
My wanderlust dreams aren’t all bad. They are blue – calm + mindful – and that is perfect to me. Present. Mindful. Dreamy.
colourmeanna 