How do you explain to people that you don’t belong where you are, without offending them?

This is a problem I have struggled with for most of my adult life… and its not getting any easier.  A lot of people, particularly family take it as a personal insult whenever you mention moving away from the Gold Coast.  I don’t know if thats because they think its a reflection on them or just a comment on not finding the Coast the best place to live EVER.

I think finding “the best place to live” is circumstantial.  I realise that a lot of people love it here and there are quite a few people are trying to resettle but just because other people think its the bees knees doesn’t necessarilly mean we have to feel the same.

So, we live out in the Hinterland with a bit of insulation from the “city” part of our city.  Our house is fine, the area is fine but its not where we are meant to be.  People call us selfish, actually they call us a lot worse… and its impossible to try and explain our position.  We get fairly constantly “you are so lucky to live where you live” and if we felt like we belonged here, I would agree.  The Gold Coast – Australia in fact, its beautiful… I am not denying that… but we have found beauty somewhere else….

On Friday we returned from 3 weeks on the South Island of New Zealand… I cried almost the whole 4 hours home…. I felt like I was being torn away from my home… unwillingly.  I feel like there is a piece of myself over there that I only get to reconnect with for a few weeks every year (if we near work ourselves to death).  So the part of me that is back here has to deal with not being “whole” for another 50 weeks until we are back again… and oh yeah… in the meantime we have to pay off a wedding which has fetched a price a little higher than what I was hoping for (yet still quite a bit cheaper than having the equivalent in Australia).

I know enough to know that at the moment I am experiencing culture shock (life is quite hard back here and it comes very easy over there)… I haven’t been able to talk to anyone other than Stocker yet… I put it down to not being ready to rejoin our life here… and that is certainly not an insult… or at least, not intended as one….  We missed our babies (Summer and Sophie) and the people here, we just didn’t miss “here”.

Anyway – its back to my first job tomorrow and my second on Thursday (plus I have a medication review somewhere in there too – busy week) so I best start getting prepared…. I do have some lighthearted and funny stories from our first trip after the diagnosis but they will have to wait for another day…

I hope the next 50 weeks will pass quickly… and I hope many of the people we invite to our wedding will at least try to make it… perhaps we won’t get as many funny looks if people see the place we call “home”.