Aug 23, 2016
By Rebecca Bellan
I Choose My Freedom in Australia…For Now
We laid on our sides on what I once called our bed. Nose touching tip of nose, eyes locked into eyes. I traced the outside of his face with my free hand, imagining that I could feel the difference between the brown, gold and crimson strands of his beard underneath my fingertips. The scent of him filled me like smoke. I breathed in earth, clean laundry and a hint of weed. In this bed, there was nothing else. Only the physical tug of my heart to his, our breath slowed down to one. If I made this moment my entire world, I was happy.
“Come home,” he said, breaking the comfortable silence. “You can still travel. Just come home to me.”
I was leaving him for now the third time. The freedom that comes with traveling– the thrill of uncertainty, the choices that follow ambiguity– had once again found prominence in my heart over anything that would just make me one half of a whole. This time, I’d be gone for more than a four month backpacking stint around Europe or South America. I was going to Australia for at least a year, and I intended to finally make this breakup stick.
However, my mind struggled to find the flaw in his plan, drunk as I was on the happiness that I associated with his presence. It sounded nice. I could have both.
He assured me certainty, security, love, a future–the sweetest of chains. So I imagined living out my life with him, continuing the dream state of that bed. The only thing that he truly stimulated in me was a sexual desire. The rest would continue to be a mindless routine, devoid of intelligent conversation. He would watch football. I would cook him lasagna. He’d tell me he thought it was cute that I liked to read. I’d try in vain to discuss Orwell with him. He would work at the bar. I would find some middleman job. He’d buy a house in a small Massachusetts town. We’d take turns digging our cars out of the New England snow, and he’d get angry when he caught me lusting after Google images of exotic places. We’d smoke weed everyday to further along the numbing effect. He’d get me pregnant one day, like he always wanted. He’d teach our child to throw a ball, and I’d try to instill enough independence and individuality in her so that she could live the life I always wanted–a life of adventure and freedom.
To stay with him would have been to make the choice to throw a huge spoiler alert over my entire life, to watch the Red Wedding scene of Game of Thrones just as I got invested in the first season. Our relationship presented only walls and no frontiers.
I didn’t know who I was when I wasn’t his. All I knew was that it bothered me, a literal constant pain in my side each time I realised that I was becoming part of an indifferent and incurious population that gets stuck in relationships that are finite, lethargic and easy. I realized that I lived for my connection to him, changing myself to fit his mold. I neglected everything else that I ever wanted, pursuing those finite moments of happiness wholeheartedly so that I could mollify my anxiety in the face of my natural state, the state of freedom. I wasn’t committed to my authenticity; I hid from it.
My urge to strike out on my own was a gut reaction, a survival instinct. I needed to ease the stomach-clenching dread that accompanied the notion of remaining in one place for long, and for someone else. I needed the ignition that comes with waking up in a strange city or country, stimulating myself by way of exploration, acquainting myself with a new place through its food, having informed and varied discussions in broken English over a hostel dining room table. My freedom comes with the weight of a backpack on my shoulders, a one-way ticket and a culture shock. I am the only one in this world who can give me what I crave; to travel. To live a life as a traveller means living a life of contrast and spontaneity, ambiguity and choices.
I did not say that travel made me “happy,” although it often does. Happiness is not the attainable lifetime goal. Happiness is finite. What I sought was freedom, an infinite state of being that far surpasses a vague and unattainable notion of absolute contentment.
So as I lay in that bed, contemplating the tear I had to force between us, I focused on my refusal to be defined by my environment and my sentiment, rather than by the choices I made when faced with uncertainty.
I’ve been living in Australia for almost 10 months now, and I am face to face with my independence everyday, my choice to try on life as a 24 year old Melburnian for the time being, absorbing the parts of it that add to my shifting identity. I do not know what the next steps are, for I cannot see them clearly or at all. And that’s okay. To have a full knowledge of what my years hold would be just as finite as a committed relationship with a small-minded man. The mystery that comes with knowing nothing is infinite. I am faced with an unlimited spectrum, and all I must do is choose and take responsibility for my choices, may they always be in line with my most authentic state. This is what makes me free.
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About the Author
Rebecca Bellan
Rebecca Bellan is an adventurous traveller and independent writer. She keeps up her own travel blog and contributes regularly for Matador Network. To pay for the plane tickets, Rebecca has become proficient in copywriting and content marketing strategies. She is currently living and working in Melbourne, Australia. Among her favorite activities are tree/rock climbing, sticking her nose in books, feeding her loved ones, playing competitive sports, and of course, packing a backpack and going.