by Metamorphoenix

After my father’s death last year and while the wheels of divorce were still turning, I planned to make my maiden solo vacation.

I was ashamed to admit that I had never travelled alone in my entire life, the same way I had never lived alone in my entire 44 years. So I chose a destination I’d travelled partially to before, and which had a couple of friends living enroute – Melbourne & Victoria. It was supposed to be a journey of self discovery but ended up as one of recognition and acceptance instead.

I had planned to set aside some time on the trip to take treks and perhaps pause to sketch or paint some of the sights and scenery, to take time to reflect on who I was and what I intended to do with myself post-divorce. I ended up discovering my strengths, accepting that I was far from perfect, and embracing my weaknesses.

I’m a planner (because I don’t do off-the-cuff very well) so it was no surprise that I drew up a 15-page document detailing what to pack, a travel itinerary, my friends’ full contact details, full information on the car rental company and hostels/motels, things to do at each destination, recommended restaurants and cuisines, detailed route maps for the drive between each town (LOVE Google maps!), and a shopping list.

If you think this is an indication that I have an obsessive compulsive disorder, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Besides, I’ll have you know that I didn’t go so far as to create hourly schedules for each day. So there!

Actually, I plan this extensively for only one reason – I do not handle surprises well. I freak out, hyperventilate, tear my hair out and cry copiously … not a pretty sight at all. So to save the Aussies from this deranged Singaporean woman, I planned ahead as much as possible. All this planning also helped create a clear picture of where I would be each day and all options available at each location.

Safe with the knowledge that each day had some kind of structure, I was free to pursue what I wanted at each part of the trip. Sure, I listed down 10 restaurants for each town, but I was free to decide which one to actually eat at. And if I saw some other cafe along the way that looked interesting, I stopped to have a chai latte, a falafel wrap, or fish and chips.

I made little unplanned side trips based on my mood. While driving down the Great Ocean Road I saw a sign for the Otway Lighthouse and made an impulse detour that gave me an unexpected close encounter with a koala. In a little inland town called Birregurra, I unearthed a wonderful little tea room at Gentle Annie’s Berry Farm that served the most delicious sweet potato and ginger soup with a comforting side of warm homemade damper bread and hand-churned butter. These little side trips created pleasant surprises and not stress, because I knew I had a fall-back plan for the day.

There are always the things that the locals can introduce to you that isn’t in any travel guide. In Lorne where I stayed with friends, I was brought to the hilly backstreets to look for mama koalas with their babies in the gum trees, and down to a neighbourhood lane where king parrots swooped down and ate from the palms of our hands. In the evenings, a grassy knoll by the Georges River brought out grazing kangaroos.

For the first time, I took time to look up and see birds flying in a V-formation. I handfed a strange marsupial called a pademelon and watched fairy penguins come up from the beach to their nest burrows. I drove onto a car ferry for the first time (my rampaging imagination had me hitting the accelerator instead of the brakes and driving off the ferry into the water) and I pursued a wild echidna into a ditch paparazzi-style just so I could get a snapshot of it. I realised I liked the coast and the mountains but didn’t think much of the city.

I discovered I could stay in a hostel single room (except sharing bathrooms and loos can be very traumatic) but that communal living in a 10-bed dormitory was beyond my sensibilities and capabilities (cue the aforementioned freaking out). Even with the best laid plans, I could underestimate driving distances and end up arriving 3 hours later than scheduled on an empty stomach. Trust me, one CAN survive for 7 hours on a croissant and large coffee but it makes you a very grouchy so-and-so.

So I took 30 minutes to initially set up the car’s GPS device but throughout the 18 days, I only misinterpreted the verbal directions and went off-route ONCE! That showed me that I was cautious, listened well, could negotiate unfamiliar territory, and above all – did it ALL BY MYSELF (beams with pride).

I learnt that I didn’t always have to ask strangers to take photos for me (love my Guerrilla Camera Stand!), and that I felt less alone when I was alone than when I was in a crowd. By the way, the best views are not always on the well-worn path but around the corner from what seems like an inaccessible rocky outcrop. Then three days before I left Melbourne, Facebook threw up a friend who had moved there and I enjoyed an unexpected day catching up with him.

I also discovered how expensive using Singapore ISP broadband overseas can get, how afraid I could feel when I was alone in a ground floor motel room, how wonderfully open-hearted the Aussies can be and yet how threatening a man in a car seemed when he stopped beside me as I walked down a dark street (I was lost at the time, trying to find my way back to the hostel from the train station so cue second major freakout).

Instead of painting, I captured the special moments and beautiful scenery with my digital camera (discovering that yes, I can deplete a fully charged battery in half a day), and kept in touch daily with friends, family and my Man through skype, emails and blogging.

I returned to Singapore with a sigh of relief (and overweight luggage), with lots of food for thought. I realised that I don’t like being alone, but if push came to shove, I could stand on my own two feet.

I was no longer a solo travel virgin, and I had done it without catastrophe – well except for two meltdowns. Everything that happened and every lesson learnt went into my blog, and you’ll get the entire travelogue in the next few articles.

My name is Meta, I am a survivor, and I accept this journey as my right to living a full life.

©Metamorphoenix

Metamorphoenix is a regular contributor to www.thegroovini.com.  She is an over-40 full-figured newly-divorced sister searching for a happy life. It’s sometimes painful, sometimes funny, sometimes ridiculous … but always from the heart.

For more Meta stories, click here

by Metamorphoenix

“What is Love?” – a friend blogged recently.

He was referring of course to romantic love; the love between a man and a woman (well, and other potential gender permutations too).

I wrote back to him and shared my perceptions of what I thought Love was, but even as I wrote I realised that I couldn’t define it either. Then it dawned on me that love is really such a personal and individual phenomenon. I call it a phenomenon because it changes you and allows you to make a difference in someone else’s life.

20 years ago, I thought I would KNOW Love when I found it. It would be romantic, exciting and everlasting. I had one schoolgirl crush (all I will say is … poor chap) and had a couple of guys interested in making me their ‘girl’. But at 21, I found someone I crushed on and grew to love. After 8 years of courtship and 12 years of marriage, that love has become – on my part at least – wariness and fear.

Was it really Love? What changed? What then, is Love? How will we know it will last?

Falling in love is easy; staying in love is the hard part. Once the romance fades, reality sets in with the day to day discovery of each other’s foibles and idiosyncrasies, the way we handle situations, the values we each have and the little niggling habits that once charmed. How do we get past that to a deeper sustaining love?

It doesn’t matter what love you have for each other, but the key thing is that you manage the couple dynamics and TALK through it all. Communications is key, and I believe in that with total conviction.

So back to that million dollar question – what IS Love?

A large category of my reading literature is romance, always has and always will be. But in real life, Love doesn’t come in the form of tall, dark and handsome, love at first sight, or even Like.

Sure, there needs to be some physical attraction. But a large part of Love is about finding someone who completes you across all levels. In my observations of friends and other couples around me, the strength of that Love is based on having your partner be your best friend too. How many of us can actually claim that in our relationships / marriages?

So what do we share with our best friends that can be brought into our relationships?   In a nutshell I can identify communication, honesty, acceptance and companionship. Can we honestly say we have that with our significant others? If we have this, then the Love that we share can only become richer.

In our parents’ generation, there have been many instances where the woman puts her needs and her wants second to her man’s. But this was also the generation that thought a woman’s place was in the home, and if the man was the chief breadwinner, he was the Man of the House and was awarded due respect for that. A return of that courtesy to the woman wasn’t considered necessary or pertinent. It wasn’t the woman’s ‘place’ to know more than what he intended to let her in on.

If today’s divorce statistics are anything to go by, we are the generation that has challenged many relationship norms. We find that Love alone won’t sustain us, but it does beg the question of how far we will go for our partners. What is the breaking point for each of us? Maybe for some of us, there is NO breaking point but we ‘tolerate’ any situation because it’s expected of us.

But whatever the choice we make, Love is the backbone of the relationship equation. Different people are contented with what they perceive as acceptable levels of Love. As long as both parties are happy with what they’ve got, then they’ve got a good thing going.

Love can be comfortable, passionate, all-consuming, intense, bubbly, cute, quiet, non-complaining, argumentative, conceding, demanding … really too many types to identify. But it has to be something that we are happy or at least contented with it.

Love meets our needs – our need to share, to provide, to spend time together, to go home to, to think of, to be confident in, to listen, to talk to, to do something for, to receive – so many things. Sometimes that love comes easy, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way we all have to work at it and maybe even fight for it.

Someone said Love is unselfish, but I beg to differ because it is a little selfish in that we love how it makes us feel good and completes us. The unselfish part is in putting ourselves second, in being patient, in letting go if need be and in being there when needed.

However, Love is not irrational, it should not harm, it should not resent, it gives before demanding. Maybe this perception of Love has been shaped by the bible lessons I grew up on but in seeking perfect Love, I forgot that it can come in so many colours and forms. And that it is something we can never take for granted.

Above all, we build on the Love we have and make it work.

Metamorphoenix is an over-40 full-figured newly-divorced sister searching for a happy life. It’s sometimes painful, sometimes funny, sometimes ridiculous … but always from the heart.

For more Meta stories click here