Chapter 1: In the Bin
Sorting through the skip out the front of a flat in London in the middle of Coronavirus is not what I would call an auspicious start to a Tuesday.
But nevertheless, in the middle of 2020, that’s where I was.
Living in a mixed flat, broke, jobless, and – worst of all – single.
Having spent the last 10 years of my life travelling the world, it would seem I had missed out the crucial ingredient to success – finding it.
I had searched for myself and lost all sense of purpose and direction in the process.
I had travelled from Melbourne to New York to London and while I’d grown as a person, what did I really have to show for my years on the road?
Backtrack a few months earlier to the 10-year wedding anniversary of a friend in New Zealand. I’d sung at her wedding. Everyone standing around me seemed to have children, or seemed to be in the process of having them.
Me? I had my own twinset - Pinot and Grigio.
My friends had all moved on in their lives from being the people they had been 10 years ago. Yet, my life was so far off the mark I didn’t even know where to start.
It resembled that song by Amy Mann that my brother had sent me on a birthday several years ago. What were the words again? “I thought my life would be different by now/ I thought my life would be better somehow.”
As the toasts and clinking glasses rang out around me, I felt an unspeakable, unshiftable emptiness land.
“I – have – to – go,” I said falteringly. “Con-grats.” And I ended up running out of that bar in floods of tears. Right back on the bus and to my childhood home in Wellington.
Something was wrong. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
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