I've struggled with sitting down to write this, this that I want to be the final entry in this chapter of entries. I want to close off and complete the chronicling of my sabbatical. Problem is, somewhat unexpectedly, it hasn't yet ended. Or rather, it's ending has been overshadowed by a beginning that is setting my life on a different path who's destination I'm still unsure of.
So what am I going on about then? Let me start simply then, with the facts and feelings that I will use to tell Our Story. Mike came into my life in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. It was against one of nature's most spectacular backdrops that I found a man and a love that I wasn't expecting. He was the other solo traveller on the week-long horse ride and camping trip I'd been so looking forward to. If I were to pinpoint when exactly this realisation began to dawn on me, it was while we stood staring in amazement at a mountain range after tracking the remains of a mule deer killed by cougars on a river bank. Romantic in it's own unique way.
We spent three more days together in the Rockies, learning more about each other and growing more and more aware of the certainty of a shared future. Then one morning, we parted ways. Mike went west, towards Vancouver and his flight home, and I went east, ever eastward towards the Atlantic. We were both left reeling by the separation. I felt I had found something so fundamental to my own future and contentment. To have it pulled away from me after far to brief a time was just madness. I felt hollowed out, with an empty place just below and to the right of my heart.
Before parting in Lake Louise, we had agreed to meet again in London, at the end of my trip and when I could join Mike on his planned trip to France. And so, my van sold to a couple in Montreal, I flew to London and to Mike. It was there in London, in Hyde Park with the sun beaming down and children running about us that we acknowledged our certainty and I became a future wife to Mike, my future husband. The following week in France felt in some way like a celebration of this intent, of this mutual agreement to a shared life.
So now I am back in Brisbane, awaiting a visa and generally killing time before I can return to that maddeningly immense and immensely expensive city and once more to Mike. My journey of self-discovery, self-reliance, and selfish relaxation may now be over but in making one journey, another has begun in it's stead. This one, however, is one with a shared purpose and with the greatest travel companion I could have ever hoped for.
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