Perhaps...

If I had room on an arm, my next tattoo would be:

forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit

it is latin for:

'perhaps we'll look back on this oneday and smile'

(loose translation)

Oh hell, I have plenty of body parts left...surely it can't be that hard to find somewhere. I realise that I like to get 'mantra' types of things tattoed on me, all of them so far have been really important things for me to look at and remember.

Anyway, I am not fully sure about this one as I am working out that sometimes it's tough to see yourself looking back on something and smiling. Especially hurtful things. I am told that time is all it takes...you know, TIME. If I think back on 8 years ago when I first came to this country, I remember being really scared, unsure and sad about leaving my family, friends and country...but also feeling kinda high by the thought of the journey ahead. Knowing that I was exactly where I was mean't to be at the time and that in the midst of everything, I would be safe.

I am what is considered to be a 'latch key kid'...in that for most of my growing up I was left to make up my own world after school etc. I spent hours either getting lost in my parents warehouse while they worked or I would catch a bus or walk home from school so I could ride my horse through the bushland around where I lived exploring, or swimming in the dam or building tree houses with my bro, or playing cricket with the kids who lived around my area...all pretty much unsupervised. It mean't that I also got into a lot of 'trouble'....you know, raiding the liquor cabinet, trying pot, experimenting with sex. All those things and more. I know some people grow up with a sense of feeling abandoned because of the latch key thing...but I have realised recently that it actually helped give me my sense of safety in the world. That I always felt able to take care of myself or work out what to do next and have always felt a pretty deep sense of being looked out for wherever I go. In my late teens, I use to always have dreams about the angel Gabriel hanging out with me...just keeping his eye on things.

Anyway, some of that sense of safety has been a little wobbly lately...not being sure, you know, all that stuff (I am sure regular readers have felt that here)....trying to work out why and how and how to get it back. I know part of it is just deciding that I am safe...and also deciding that I am exactly where I am mean't to be at this time.

So....I am sure oneday I may decide to look back and smile...but I definately know that I will look back and know that this period of my life was unbelievably defining. Huge growth in my person, huge lessons, huge heartaches and sadness....but, I feel a little tingly feeling coming back...it's either gas, or it's that high 'wow, what next' kinda thing going on.

Off to drink beers with mates....wanna come?

xxM