On being lucky and loved.

I’m feeling blessed. I’m feeling the wash of love and good feelings and freedom and creativity and…. everything that is important to me.

The last two weeks have been so significant. To spend time with just me, my thoughts, my family and my friends. I can’t change who I am. I have to harness what truly makes me shine.

This is especially an important concept this year, as I approach a new decade. I struggled, wondering what this meant to me. But I need to stop worrying, and just be myself, and the best version of myself. The bright, happy, spontaneous, lovable, creative person that I am. I’ve struggled with my self-esteem so much over the years, and it’s time for me to just be happy with life.

I felt this strongly when I was on year twelve retreat. I was sitting, cross-legged, with a group of rowdy boys who just wanted me to feel accepted and equal. They knew I was a different kind of teacher, but they loved that I was completely myself. 

We shared so many personal experiences with each other, and I felt like part of their family. And the letters they wrote me at the end: it made me realise why I do the job I do. It’s not for the marking, the ladder climbing, the fact that my parents are proud that I’m an English teacher – it’s because I love connecting with people and sharing my love and life experience. I love guiding young people. I love building my family. And this wonderful, warm group of people left that retreat hugging me and tearing up as we left for the 2.5 week break. Not just girls, boys too. I felt it, a feeling of pride in who we were, and an understanding of what we all meant to each other. And the thing that really got under my skin, was the fact that one beautiful kid told me that he was sad that we’d only have two more terms in homeroom class together, and that he felt blessed that he had met me.

I thought, wow. I had stalled on leaving my old school, thinking that I’d never have these bonds again. I was so scared that leaving Kolbe would be the end of my career, or at least, the end of the beautiful parts of my career. And here they are again. Stronger, unstoppable.

I feel love. And that’s the only way to describe it, just as Gregory David Roberts describes in Shantaram. 

You feel love inside for others. You show your love to others. Unbridled and real and unashamed. That’s the Indian way that people show love and I guess that’s my way too.

And yet I always tend to feel the most love towards people who hide their love so deep, it is almost untouchable. Maybe because I have so much love within me, I need to unlock that love.

It’s no surprise that a lot of my creative writing is linked to love. Just as Tim Winton is inextricably linked with imagery of the ocean, I feel tangled in love. I breathe it, I understand it. And I won’t apologise for it. I feel songs and stories that tinker in love. I have had life experience that builds so many levels of understanding about love. The abuse of love. The loss of love. The reconnection of love.

Trying to understand a father who did not love himself, not one little bit. To the point where he was so willing to give his life away.

A mother who loved so much, too much, destructively, untamed, passionate, unstable. But always, always consistent. I will always love my mother for her reliable love. I think I am very much like her. I don’t fall in and out of love quickly; I hold love for a very long time, and there is something beautiful in that.

One thing I cannot stand in the world is a fickle love. One who decides they love one week, and fall away a moment later.

But I have also learnt the difference between love and attachment. Attachment holds no purpose. Love lasts always, an eternity. The people in your life who represent real connection and love will always fleet by your side and in your thoughts with only goodness and happiness. Attachment however, is destructive. I have fallen into this trap many times, trying to hold people in my life in a terribly unloving way. To let go of attachment is the ultimate love.

I’ve changed my life in many ways this year, but actually, I’ve come back around to where I was, and where I’m meant to be. I can’t be holding on to negativity and attachment anymore for the wrong reasons. There’s a great beauty in letting people go and letting them live their life. Because I will always be here when they want to be in my life again.

Life is exciting, and wonderful, and as I’ve experienced in the last few days, reconnecting with people who I hold so close to my heart, I know that all I need is their presence in my life.

And I had hugs with people I really, really needed hugs from. And I felt complete again, knowing that their open, honest smiles and warmth and twinkle in their eyes meant that our connection means a forever of happiness. I’ll always hold on to that feeling.