How my life is currently is not at all how I imagined it. I always pictured me living in the country side in Ireland preferably close to some type of body of water. Not too far from my family as I always grew up with a very close knit family we all live in the same area, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. All walking distance from each other really. I pictured myself having at least one child by now and maybe in a dream career that made me excited to go to work. A good group of girlies to spend free time with. Lots of family time, seeing my siblings all the time, being the reliable one that everyone knows they can call on and I will be there. Going to my parents house for dinner and catchups and them being so involved with however many children I end up having because they love kids and are so amazing with them. That was the dream, never had to be alone or suffer in silence because my family were always and always would be within arms reach.

But my reality is much different to how I pictured it. I am in Australia thousands of miles away from all family, love, security and friends. Home, I am away from my home. I have always been a home bird, I couldn’t even do sleepovers till I was about 16 because I would cry for my mom and dad, yes I was one of those kids. I went on holiday with my family every year and would never miss it no matter how old I got even since coming to Australia I would travel home just for that traditional holiday that we have all been going on every year since I was 2, even if it got boring as i got older because my family are my life.

When I came to Australia my intention was never to stay here for good. I was coming out for 3 months had my return flight booked and I did go home, after 3 months I went back home. Then I thought I would come back out give it a better go and if anything maybe just work and save and go home and buy a house or something. So I came back after being back about a month I got a new job that was perfect for that plan. Then I met my now partner the first day of my new job. Never expected it, wasn’t looking for it but there he was. The literal love of my life. I knew he was going to be special to me the minute I saw him, my life changed. That was 3 years ago now and we are still very much happily together and I am still in Australia.

This is where the problem comes in because I can’t picture my life here, I don’t know what it would look like because I never thought it would come to this. I don’t want to go home because I know I will never meet someone like my partner and he is my life partner I couldn’t do this life with anyone else but at the same time I feel a physical ache for home. To be surrounded by love and security again. I feel so lonely here because I don’t have roots here nothing connects me to here. The thought of one day having children and them only know their grandparents through a video call makes me hysterical I can’t even imagine it because it is so far from anything I ever would have thought my life would be.

It’s like I am constantly torn between two places and I am really struggling. I’m not really sure what to do either, it’s an impossible choice. All the effort and work and money that went into me staying too with visas and everything else but I just always have that ache in my heart. I thought maybe getting it all out might help, maybe there’s someone out there who understands and could maybe share their perspective. It would be appreciated. I don’t want to get old and look back on my life wishing I spent more time with family. I don’t want to one day look and realise how much time I lost with them before it is too late. It breaks my heart to even think about.

I hope you are listening.

To my beautiful nana, Angie baby.

What a gem you truly were. You were an angel on this earth, always too good for this world. You were the most beautiful soul i have ever met and it breaks my heart to know your leaving because I know I will never meet another like you in this lifetime. You were and always will be completely irreplaceable.

You were such a fighter nana you have always had the strongest and biggest heart and I am so grateful for the years I got with you. I know you will live on forever in the hearts of the people you met and the lives you touched because that was the kind of person you were, unforgettable. You were such a light in everyone’s lives.

I can’t help but feel anger at the world for the cards you were dealt, but you took it in stride and fought for as long as you could. If this world was fair and rewarded the good people I just know you would have lived forever nan. It is probably selfish to say I wanted you to stay I wasnt ready to let go, I dont think I ever will be. I dont think anyone could ever really be ready to say goodbye to a person like you nan but you were finally ready to rest and I just know Granda PJ and Paula are waiting for you to come home to them, you kept them waiting long enough and I know they are missing you too. That gives me comfort knowing they are waiting for you and there will be no more suffering.

I love you with my whole heart and soul. I wouldn’t be half the person I am today without you and the influence you had on my life. You were always so gentle, kind, caring and patient a true lady, always. I will never forget you and your infectious laugh, you loved a good laugh and a joke, a right messer you were. I am going to miss you more than words can say and it breaks my heart that I’m not there to say goodbye but i know you are with me and our love is stronger than any distance.

I could go on forever, you really were so precious Nan. I will carry you in my heart all my life and I know you will always be with me.

Be at peace now. Tell granda and Paula how much we love and miss them too even though I’m sure they already know.

I love you forever and always, Nana.

I will see you when I get there for a big hug and a kiss. Lots of love, Ciara.

I remember memories with him so vividly compared to any of the rest it’s strange. I remember the love i felt for him and the love he showed me, the feeling of excitement of going to see both him and my nana. I remember when he began having the heart attacks and couldn’t use the stairs anymore but they never made it scary for us kids he had to get a chair lift for the stairs but we would use the chair as a toy most of the time.

I feel at the time as a child you know something is going wrong, they move slower, struggle more, sometimes don’t seem themselves. But he always put a smile on his face for me and i always had a smile in return. I remember him coming down the stairs on his chair and i would wait in the living room to see his cheery face. That was the first thing that hurt afterwards, going to my nans and waiting, watching the chair waiting for him to come down again but of course he never did.

I also remember the night it happened. There were people over at my house and my mam and dad left, when they got back you could see my mam was after being crying, she said she hit her knee with the car door. I knew she was lying i could sense it. I don’t remember actually being told my grandad passed but my next memory was being outside the funeral home and because I was so young I wasn’t allowed in to see him. I remember being in the car crying and crying and crying. I wanted to see him i wanted to say goodbye too. I never did. I remember his coffin being lowered into his grave and throwing in a rose. I also remember the pain. For so long after his passing anytime I thought of him I would feel physical pain in my chest, an ache I thought would never ever leave me it was like that for years. But because it happened when I was so young it does fade and get easier as you grow.

Now with my nana its a very different feeling and different experience because one, I am older, two, my nana had been sick for a very long time and was only suffering and needed to rest and of course three, I am on the other side of the world. Finding out my nana was being put on end of life was a little bit of a shock, as I say I knew it would happen eventually but I feel you never can truly prepare for them to really be gone. In a way it almost felt like it wasn’t happening because of being away I could compartmentalise the situation.

But when I saw her for the first time in 2 years it shattered my heart, I couldn’t believe it was real. She was unrecognisable. I feel so bad that it had been so long since I last saw her. I hope she knows how much I love her and how much it hurt me to not be there I really did want to be there with her. I miss her everyday, I try not to be sad when I think of her but to see the beauty in life and the gratitude that I had a nana like her. It is hard trying not to be sad when I simply cannot believe she is just gone and has seized to exist. I don’t want to believe it.

She deserved so much better than what she got in this life but she never let the hard times change her she was always so graceful and never angry, never hateful. She was such a happy and beautiful soul and I wish she could have enjoyed her years being fully here with us. It’s like a double type of grief for my nana because I am grieving the fact that she is gone but also who she was before the dementia it all meshes together. The person she once was, the person she became and now her being gone.

I hope in her last minutes she remembered. Just one last time I hope she got to see the beautiful life she had and how filled with love and laughter it was, because it really was. She raised a beautiful family and her grandchildren all adored her and i hope that’s what she got to see. I hope she wasn’t scared. I miss her so much

My nan died. Wow even saying it still doesn’t make it feel real, it doesn’t make it feel right. It will never be right again. And I wasn’t able to be there and I am so far from home. I hope she understood why I wasn’t there, I hope she wasn’t upset with me. I think those thoughts will haunt me forever. Even though we all knew it was coming for awhile now it still hurts just as much I don’t think loosing someone is ever something you can really prepare for because the person is just gone, done, thats it. They no longer exist in the same universe as you and you will never find them hear again, hear their voice, their laugh, feel the warmth of their embrace.

It’s funny because as a child even when you learn of death and hear of death and you know it is inevitable you never truly believe it will come to your door. Because your grandparents are always there, surely nothing could possibly happen to them. But time happens and it stops for no one. You always think they are invincible and will always be in your life as they always have been. But it is so far from the truth and the truth hurts.

I have such an ache in my chest, my grief is manifesting physically as well as mentally. I know all this pain I’m feeling is simply all the love i have for her still that now has nowhere to go so it fills you up till it hurts. I am trying to cope but I really don’t know how. I want to be with my family. I cannot stand the thought that the next time I see my nan, it will be a headstone.

My nan had dementia for a couple of years before she died and it is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. It is the most heartbreaking thing to watch someone who has lived a beautiful life and so many people who love them and see them forget it all and lose the sparkle they always had in their eyes. I hope she was able to remember, in her last minutes I hope she wasn’t scared and was comforted by a rush of memories of everyone who loved her, there was so many who did. I hope wherever she is she is reunited with my grandad and they are watching and waiting for us.

I am so sorry nana, I will mourn you for the rest of my life.

I morph and adapt to my surroundings and the people I’m with. It’s almost like I’m scared to have my own opinion or my own thoughts, I never want to say something that may offend someone or come across confrontational so I simply agree. People may see this as me being fake but it genuinely does not come from a place like that it is simple because I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, which is strange because the only one who is, is me.

I’ve been thinking and I’ve realised how insignificant I am in people’s lives so why am I afraid to embrace the person I really am? No one will think it’s a personal attack just because I think differently to them. So why can I not snap out of it. It’s almost like maybe I don’t know myself.

When it comes to work even if I know what I’m doing I always second guess myself, this is where sometimes I think maybe it’s some kind of imposter syndrome, that I have convinced myself I don’t belong so I never will. I never speak up or give my opinion even though I know what I am doing. I always ask someone else what should we do how do you want to do it.

Maybe it’s my self worth? Maybe my voice was never heard so I don’t believe it deserves to be? I don’t really know why I am how I am. Even in a room where I’m the oldest and most experienced I am looking for someone to tell me what to do, how to do it. But if I was alone I would simply do what I need to do. I can’t tell people what to do either. Sometimes I feel like I’m 17 year old me still trapped in an aging body and I always wonder how everyone around me can be so sure, so confident.

I wish I believed in myself a little more, maybe I need someone to believe in me.

I wish I felt I belonged.

As a kid I would always think if something happens to me it will show me who really cares about me. I don’t know when, how or why it began but I could just never trust people’s words for as long as I can remember. I always thought if I was the victim people will care for me people will show up for me then I will know who really cares. It doesn’t work like that by the way. But even sometimes now that thought creeps up on me.

I have such a strange internal relationship with myself because it’s kind of like if people act a way I would never it just blows my mind and I spiral and tell myself they don’t love or care for me.

“I would never have done that to them, I would have done this, but they didn’t so clearly they don’t care”.

Everyone shows up differently and thats still something I struggle to deal with. I recently had to move away from friends and was in a new area and in my head I convinced myself, everyone will forget about me because I’m inconvenient in everyone’s lives, I drag people down because I’m always sad. When no one really reached out I didn’t either because I would just “be a bother”. I told myself “see you were right, they don’t care and they have forgotten”. When I was back in town we all met up and it was like I never left. It’s just so confusing and hard to understand how my brain works and why I convince myself of these things.

It’s almost like I won’t allow myself to believe I can be loved and can be cared for. I’m not sure maybe it’s a way I protect myself, that if someone does leave my life it might not hurt as bad because I never let myself truly believe they care.

I am actually quite a happy person when you get to know me. I just have such a victim complex and feel the need to tell everyone the saddest and hardest times in my life because then they might understand why I am the way I am but that is not the case. Maybe I think if I let them see the deep and darkest parts of me and they stay, that they see me, they care but it doesn’t have to be like this. I don’t have to hold onto the past like that I can be a new person, someone I have always wanted to be and in turn this will draw my people to me.

I think maybe I need to stop feeling so sorry for myself and be my best self, people don’t need to know the hurt and the past because there is nothing that can be done to fix it. People show up as they are and you cannot change them to suit how it makes you feel. Stop having expectations of people and they can no longer let you down but also don’t let that fear stop you from fully being your true self.

Let your light shine!

Next thing you feel nothing at all, numbness. Completely checked out. Before that comes anger, random anger. In my grief I have been alone, I have felt alone, I am alone. It started with uncontrollable sadness. I cried to the point I felt physical pain. Till my eyes were so puffy and red they hurt to touch. I felt I would never feel normal again like a piece of me had been taken.

Then maybe slight denial, i allowed myself for a day to believe everything was okay and normal but immediately felt guilty for feeling okay and that I shouldn’t feel that way because it wasn’t fair.

Then anger, I lashed out for no particular reason only that i felt alone. I was met with little understanding and no sympathy if anything I was made to feel like it was my fault I felt this way. Which then left me feeling guilty yet again for simply feeling how I feel in such an overwhelming time in my life.

Now I think I have reached the numbness. I do not care. I can handle this alone if i have too as i feel that’s what i have been doing anyway. I wont be made to feel guilty for going through the motions and not being myself. This is normal, this is grief. So I will continue on my journey with grief that I don’t think will ever really leave me. I will see who I become in the end.

Now I am older and I live across the world from my family and loved ones and all I want to do is go back. I want to go back to me and my siblings annoying each other till my dad yelled and everyone would go quiet. When my mom would cook a meal i did like but maybe my siblings didn’t and then siding with my mom for a change and telling them they need to eat it. I miss sitting at the table for dinner and being surrounded by love. Being able to go downstairs and having someone always there. The comfort in knowing you are never alone.

I realised getting older simply meant feeling more alone. Losing things you love and feeling so disconnected to who you were and who you thought you were going to be. I recently lost my grandmother and my childhood dog, both such heartbreaking losses and it dawned on me that it is only the beginning of the losses as you get older, because not only are you getting older everyone else is too. That is something I never considered as I wished away my childhood. That is what you have to look forward to now is loss and pain and grief. Yes there will be some beautiful parts in between like children and marriage but it is loss. Siblings have their own families, your parents get older and are not how they used to be and things will never be the same. I think nostalgia will be the death of me because I know the magic of life is lost as you become an adult and no matter how hard you try to go back to that feeling its not there because it doesn’t exist.

It probably sounds morbid and is a sad way to look at this life I’ve been given but I just wish I held onto that magic more because now it is too late. I long for a day where I come home from school and me and my siblings sit to do our homework and the family has dinner together, having girly time with my mom since I’m the only girl, watching movies with my dad because we loved to do that together. I miss what I thought the world was going to be because it is just so lonely.

If I could go back to that for a day, just one more day I would, and all that time I couldn’t wait to be older.