The Boy and The Coconut Tree

If there were ever anyone who has thoroughly tested the idiom "the grass is always greener" it has to be me. I have jumped over more fences into more gardens in the past 22 years than I care to count. I am not even sure why! It started in 1992 or so when university ended as did the cozy cocoon like life I had with my friends. It ended abruptly on a June morning in 1992 as my Dad woke me from my sleep. I was asleep on the sofa in my tuxedo, hungover. It had been the last night of university, the Summer Ball,  The summer ball with Penny, Kirsteen and Mathew it was fantastic. We all sat in a park and watched the sunrise, the first day of our new, adult, post graduate lives. I remember the drive home, 5 hours of hangover hell, I was so sad. I realized life was never going to be the same and I have spent the past 22 years looking for something like it, a security blanket, an adult life I can feel comfortable with. I've never really found it. One of my students is a ...

We are already 6 days into April, it is cold outside and my big move is only 2 months away and right now I am incredibly nervous about the whole thing. I think my recent visit to my family has given me a dose of nerves. Being with my family is lovely but it often makes me feel like a slight outsider. I left my family home 25 years ago this September to go to University. I returned for a year and that was unsettling for us all as I came out to my family in those 12 months and they say moving house or the death of a relative is stressful, try coming out to your mother the week of her birthday, now that is hard!  I don't feel as if you can ever truly go back, you are there, but you are not fully the person you were before you left, and neither are they. So my visit home was lovely, it is important that I never forget where I am from and who I am but I never feel like I fully belong and if I stayed there more than 5 days I would go crazy and so would they. It is strange but I li...