*BONUS*Wrong Man, Right Country - Personal Essay

The Wrong Man, The Right Country.

When I was 20 years old, I visited Australia and left convinced of one thing.

I am meant to live here.

As a Jersey girl who barely left the East Coast of America, I had no evidence.

No family there, no job waiting for me, no logical reason whatsoever.

Just a certainty that settled into my body before I had the language to explain it.

The kind that doesn't ask for permission or proof.

It simply arrives and refuses to leave.

For years, I thought that made me psychic.

Now I wonder if I was simply listening.

Australia was the first country I had ever visited outside of North America.

I was 20 years old meeting friends who were studying abroad, one in Sydney, One in Newcastle.

And from the moment I arrived, something felt strangely familiar.

Not the streets, not the buildings, something underneath all of that.

I felt at ease in a way I couldn't account for.

I knew how to move through the city.

I blended in.

It was as though some forgotten part of me had quietly whispered, you are back.

maybe i had lived here in a previous life i don't know i only stayed ten days but as the plane lifted off the runway one thought settled into my body with complete certainty i am going to live here one day then another arrived just as clearly i'll die here Most 20 year olds would probably keep a thought like that to themselves.

I didn't.

I told anyone who would listen.

Friends, family, complete strangers if the conversation drifted that way.

One day I'm moving to Australia and I'll live there forever.

People laugh, they smiled politely and told me it was just holiday excitement.

That everyone falls in love with somewhere while traveling.