Elling’s 2018

🥀 Did a forever kind of thing with a boy.       

🥀 Sold all my things. Realised I had too many things. Vowed to have less things. 

🥀 Put remaining things in a bag and went to see the world with boy.

🥀 Said goodbye my grandma through a surgical facemask knowing she would die while I was away.

🥀 She knew this too. I couldn’t see if she was smiling or crying. 

🥀 Tested positive for explosives in Frankfurt airport.

🥀 Lived in a van in Europe for 4 months. 

🥀 Became a beer at Oktoberfest in Germany.

🥀 Felt scared of Italians in Italy.  

🥀 Had some night terrors in Spain about being buried alive.

🥀 Decided I don’t like sleeping with low ceilings. 

🥀 Volunteered to walk dogs in Portugal.

🥀 Grandma died. Cried till I thought I would spew in a car park in Porto.

🥀 Missed my mum in a way that punched me in the chest.

🥀 Accidentally went on a 4 day uphill hike in Morocco.

🥀 Patted heaps of cats. 

🥀 Patted more dogs.

🥀 Drank beer in a public bathroom of a campground till 9am in the Sitges. Said things that were the start of the end of things. 

🥀 Built a little home in Canada. 

🥀 Saw a bear. 

🥀 Skied every day for 5 months. 

🥀 Realised I don’t love skiing as much as I thought. 

🥀 Felt a love fading but also didn’t feel it. Didn’t want to feel it.

🥀 Lost a necklace and a friendship with it. 

🥀 Lost a shoe to a dance floor in belize.

🥀 Lost my phone to a dance floor in Colombia. 

🥀 Lost myself a little to a lot of (bad) things in the whole of South America.

🥀 Felt a love fading more. Was allowing myself to feel it this time. Felt sick about it. 

🥀 Saw something that felt like something crossing a border.  

🥀 Got chronic diarrhea for 6 weeks. Nearly went to hospital. Didn’t. 

🥀 Got bed bugs. 3 times. 

🥀 Confused.

🥀 Felt alone in a way that scared me. But in a way that made me miss being alone. 

🥀 Missed someone in a way that scared me more. 

🥀 Found the things on the floors of hostels, in books, in 4 am drawings that made me, me again –  stuff I forgot about when he became everything and I let everything else crumble away to nothing.    

🥀 Wrote more, and better than I ever have.

🥀 Wanted to feel wanted and couldn’t, from the person who should want me the most. 

🥀 Changed in every way. Grew heaps. Both of us. Grew apart. 

🥀 Swam in the rain at 2am with friends that felt like brothers in Panama. They still do.

🥀 Realised I make most of my decisions based on other peoples approval. Not doing that anymore. 

🥀 Disappointed myself when I heard my answers to some questions a someone asked me with our feet dangling in a pool.

🥀 Came home. 

🥀 Got my elbow tattooed. 

🥀 Fell apart. Me first. Then him. 

🥀 Had a thought, for just a moment, that perhaps things would be easier if I wasn’t here. Realised I was not ok. And that was ok. But I needed to take steps to be ok because I should be here. I want to be here. 

🥀 Broke my rib. 

🥀 Found something I care about in Melbourne. 

🥀 Agreed that love was lost over a sushi dinner. 

🥀 Became a not forever thing.

🥀 Stopped dressing like a boho beb.

🥀 Started dressing in a way that my mum didn’t like. A way that I liked. 

🥀 Stopped dying my hair. 

🥀 Stopped wearing foundation.

🥀 Fell out of a shower like an 89 year old. Lay on the floor for a second, naked, wrapped in the shower curtain and wondered what it was I was doing with my life. I got up. 

🥀 Hunch back. 

🥀 Wrote off my car

🥀 Bought a van. Called it Susan.

🥀 Raised 2 broken little people on the floor of my bedroom for 2 weeks. Broke me.

🥀 Had several panic attacks. For the first time. 

🥀 Sobbed in Susan to David Gray over how we got it so wrong, for so long.

🥀 Became the happiest I’ve been. While being the saddest I’ve been. 

🥀 Hurt my family in a way that I can’t ever repair, and they don’t know how much that hurts me.

🥀 Hugged goodbye in a dark kitchen with our toes touching. I don’t know when I will see him again. 

🥀 Had someone tell me I stopped inspiring them.

🥀 Had someone tell me they didn’t like my pants. I didn’t care. They’re great pants.

🥀 Read a letter that broke my heart like bits of chocolate.

🥀 Got a balloon.

🥀 Got confident.

🥀 Got fucking liberated.

🥀 Got me.