Alice
Springs
Jocelyn Weiss
workshops
Play With
Your Words
Writing Workshop
Magic Money
in issue seven
Scintillations
Alice Springs
Putting Off Trust
She
What Do I Know
About Trust?
Growing Into My Own
Bits of Trust
Slowing Down
Death of a Season
Trust Me, I Was Told
Servicemen’s
Camaraderie
Moody Girl
On Faith
Letters To My
Younger Self
photography
Leaves
Anna Giabanidis
Lemon Chillin
Brian Mayden
Steering Wheel
Julie Russell
Cover Outtakes
Scott Carlisle
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Issue
Eight: Power
Issue Nine: Humor
I’m
in the hostel in Alice Springs.
It’s my first night alone since I came to Australia.
I’m full of self-doubt.
I’m sitting on the lower bunk in a six-bed dorm room. I am alone, writing in my journal. I hear the playful sounds of the young, adventurous souls I
share the hostel with enjoying their BBQ and beer.
I am too afraid to go to dinner. I am terrified of
being seen alone. Alone
and old...and fat and ugly and uninteresting.
My thoughts spiral downward to fear and despair.
Who
am I kidding? What
am I trying to prove?
I
am 31 years old. I
have a boring job that I hate.
I am loveless, my husband of four years had left me
only a few months earlier. I am sad. What
do I have to offer the fun-loving, exciting young people
greedily serving themselves barbecued meat and vegetables and
beer under the tarp in the warm Outback evening?
Nothing.
So
I hide in the dorm room and ignore my hunger.
Hunger for food. Hunger
for companionship. Hunger
for a sense of belonging.
I
don’t belong here. I
am an adult. I
should be traveling with my husband, staying in 4-star
accommodations, eating in fine restaurants.
We should be seen holding hands, walking in the sunset,
laughing at some private and intimate comment.
In
the midst of my despair I hardly notice that a woman has
entered the dorm room. She
wanders from the bathroom to her bunk, idly.
“Are
you going to dinner?” she asks, tentatively.
Was
she speaking to me?
“I
was thinking about it.”
I respond.
“Care
to share a table?”
SALVATION!!!!
“Thanks.”
We
go together and join the barbecue.
The food is unmemorable.
The conversation will stay with me forever
We
sit together at a table for two.
She tells me about herself.
She is German, studying some esoteric academic
discipline at a university in Western Australia.
Whenever she can, which is pretty often, she takes
short trips to see the rest of the country.
I am fascinated...and jealous.
Her life is so...interesting.
She
asks about me. I
am slow and hesitant, but eventually I pour forth.
I tell her everything.
How I hate my job but am afraid to leave.
How my husband left me and how that’s good...and bad.
How I’m hurt and scared.
How I’m just beginning my journey to discover
Australia and to rediscover myself.
She
is fascinated. By
me? Yes, by me.
We
talk for hours. Others
leave the dining hall, night closes in and still we talk.
When
we finally say goodnight I do so with a renewed sense of
confidence. If
this woman, who’s life seems so exciting to me could find me
interesting enough to talk with all night, then maybe others
will also see me as someone worthy of their time and
attention.
My
journey has started well.
Look for 'Sex in the Outback', another Australian adventure by Jocelyn, in the next issue of Be Real Magazine.
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