Weight and want and why I am leaving...

I haven't properly blogged in quite a while. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but I think outback living has awakened an inner gravity I always suspected I possessed but never properly explored. My sense of the ridiculous has fled, the scrapes I get into are few and far between these days. Writing my light-hearted monthly parenting column has become a struggle.

In addition, in the isolation of my little kitchen a thousand miles away from the world, I've become weighed down by stories, preoccupied by the news - ebola, is it a plot to exterminate us? Gaza - what hope is there? Flight MH17 who did it? Putin a force for good or evil? American propaganda, when will the world wake up? Flight MH370 where did it go? Will they ever investigate the fall of Tower 7?

Every morning I read the news all the way to the bottom of the page and the words make me heavier. All the while the question of my life in Australia growing all the more urgent. I turned 41 last birthday and it felt as if a time ticker had been set off, the second half of my life was underway and I was living in a place I didn't want to be. As the months have passed the ticking has become louder, it taunts me: 'the longer you stay here, the harder it will be to leave'. 

I spoke to a woman on Facebook recently, we are strangers but message each other occasionally about our lives, FIFO, Australia and the all important question of returning to Ireland. She told me she was in her late 40s and as much as she would love to return to Ireland, she knew she couldn't, she was too old to start again. This struck a chord with me and filled me with panic. This would be me in another half a decade.

But as heavy as the news stories have weighed on me, the question of how to leave has weighed even heavier. It seems impossible, unmanageable, terrifying - a complicated logistical nightmare. You begin to feel you are no longer in charge of your own life, you are but a finger - wetted and held up to the wind - in an effort to see which way it's blowing.

Until one day you wake up and say 'no, feck it!' You realise your life is too precious to obsess on the ills of the world, as you drag your increasingly heavy carcass around behind you. To miss your daughter and feel you're slowly losing her, as her unfamiliar form comes through the airport, older, wiser, - with bosoms! - no longer feeling like she came from you, from this fold, this family. A stranger. She even smells different to the others now.

And then one day you look in the mirror and no longer recognise yourself anymore. You look old. You look resigned. You are also a stranger. That's the day you say to yourself, 'let's just leave'.

And so we're leaving. The details are as yet undeveloped but Europe has picked up enormously in the past three years. So while we were extremely grateful for the opportunity of a job in Australia, it has ceased to be the only option. And so once more I'm up to my knees in packing boxes, nursing a hope and a fear of something else.

Because life isn't just about making a living, having a job, although those things are important. Life is about family, belonging, and yes, getting into scrapes and seeking out the ridiculous. Life is something I have been viewing through my laptop for the last two and a half years and I want back in.

Many Irish people come to Australia, fall in love with it, settle down and spend the rest of their lives here. Good for them - really - good for them, I'm a little jealous even while I find that prospect terrifying. As a friend said to me almost two years ago now - give in to it. Just give in to Australia.

But I can't. This is my fault - my intractable, unshakable belief that I couldn't - wouldn't - live out my days here - it was just a little holiday - has coloured my experience and created a sense of waiting, punching in and out of each day, but always waiting for home time.

I'm glad I came and experienced Australia, glad the kids know a new national anthem, have experienced a different culture and perspective. Certainly there have been happy times here although I'll never complain about the drive from Galway to Dublin EVER again. But as a friend told me recently, 'you did a good job of selling it for a long time, but lately you've gone quiet'. The compromise of FIFO was too much, the bush seemed like a good alternative. And it was for a while. But not being able to bear witness to the remnants of my daughter's childhood is a compromise too far and I want her back under my roof, being part of us again.

And I want autumn! And I want snow! And I want Christmas back - it simply doesn't feel like Christmas here in December. But what I want most of all is to feel I'm not simply putting in the hours, chiming down the days, but living. Properly living. I also want this blog to be funny again. And it will be. I promise, it really will be.