Goodbye to all that; old beginnings and new endings

Ever inspired by Joan Didion, I'm farewelling the self I have known until now in search of a new journey, writes Tessa Patrick.

GOODBYE: Tessa Patrick is grappling with old beginnings and new endings, inspired by her favourite author. Picture: Contributed

OPINION:

IT IS easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends, American journalist Joan Didion once wrote.

For once, I find myself disagreeing with my hero.

I can see Friday clearly and to tell the truth, I'm terrified.

This week is my last week in this role; I'm saying goodbye to rewriting to-do lists time and time again, writing right up until deadline maybe a thing of my past, and no longer will I spill my clumsy heart out week-by-week for your amusement.

I'm saying goodbye to the incredible people I meet each day to share their stories and my colleagues I spend my waking hours with; in the office, on the netball court - you name it, we're there and we're there, joined at the hip.

I'm saying goodbye to all that. And I'm a little uneasy.

The rhythm that I've fallen into is about to get another shake up and I'm unsure that I will find the same thrill of the chase in my nutrition studies.

I could say something incredibly cliche about following your passions, but I mentioned just last week that I still have no clue where they lie.

So, I grabbed 2019 by the horns.

The rapidly-increasing-student-debt, no-secure-weekly-income, writing-less horns.

And as I mounted that metaphorical bull, I lost a little of the person I have become.

It's a weird state of transition for me, to say the least.

I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, the feeling of when the Sunshine Coast began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended.

Once again, like when I first arrived here 13 long months ago, I will lay alone and jobless by the pool, listening to podcasts and swallowing books whole, day in and day out.

Except this time, I will be laying by my own pool and the podcasts will no longer be true crime, but how to balance your chakras and why gluten counteracts the gut health benefits of home-brewed kombucha to help me get through my assignments.

Instead of hitching a lift to the IGA, I'll be riding my bike to my favourite coffee shop by the beach.

I have grand plans of finally learning to surf, after a 2018 of telling my friends back home I was trying my hardest.

Which, as I write, sounds like I will be living the dream. Student life is always painted out to be a more glamorous life than the two-minute noodles and rundown flats that are expected of us; but when you're amongst it, with the assignments and the textbooks and the bills - it's sobering.

And then there has been an overwhelming sense of grief I've had to battle, in what feels like walking away from the career path I always saw myself on; the person I saw myself becoming, the skills I learnt and the energy I spent to get here.

It's not the lack of money or the severe tan I will develop that worries me, but the enormous leap sideways into another sense of self.

But when I reflect on where I was a year ago, and all that I've done since, I can't wait to see where this metaphorical one-way ticket takes me.

Originally published as Goodbye to all that; old beginnings and new endings