A Breather
It’s been a month since I had a seasonal asthma flare-up triggered by Melbourne’s high pollen count. Hay fever season is usually a pain for everyone who inhabits this southern city, but for the second year in a row (after living here for nine years), it’s cost me far more than just an itchy throat and a blocked nose.
The feeling of being stuck indoors brings back Covid-19 vibes; except this time, it’s just me self-isolating, which makes it feel strangely lonely. I wear a mask for the hour I take my dog to the park, but mostly I feel tethered to my air purifier, as if I need to be near it around the clock. This isolation has arrived at a moment in my life when many things inside me are being stirred up. I had just returned from a lifelong dream trip to Egypt (and oh man, what a trip! More on that in another post). But the aftermath of such an experience has left so many things unsettled.
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Now that I’m writing this, it feels almost ironic that pollen and dust are what’s affecting me most, when my inner thoughts are also all over the place, unable to settle, unable to rest, die, or make new life. While so much is “up in the air,” the one thing I keep coming back to is breathing itself. The simple act of trying to take a full breath, to fill my lungs with clean, crisp air, to feel oxygen flow through my body, something I haven’t felt in a month.
The need for a “breather” is both literal and metaphorical. I’ve felt burnt out since halfway through my PhD (and it’s been two years since I finished). I’ve poured so much energy into building my early academic career that writing these kinds of reflections (or even recording my podcast) has sat on the back burner, waiting for some mythical free time to return. But now, this need for breath seems to be calling them back, regardless of my capacity to focus. Writing is returning as a way to breathe: to take in, to express out. The need to breathe is also a need to explore again, to travel, to move beyond the conventional life paths that so many of my friends are taking.
This urge to get out into the world, to experience new cultures, to be challenged and amazed again, began a few months ago. After a few wild years of heartbreak, disconnection, demotivation, and anxiety, I started to feel like my life had become automated, like a Ford factory line churning out bits of work that might someday make my CV attractive enough for a more permanent job. All the while, I was doing everything possible to survive in a country so far from my own. The need to go, to explore, to express, to not confine myself; it comes with the realisation that maybe my life choices aren’t fixed. That even though I was once determined to stay in Australia and build a life here, each strained breath lately reminds me that permanency might not be the point. Maybe changing my mind is okay. Maybe nine years of surviving here is enough to wonder if this survival has lost its appeal.
Ironically, this month marks nine years since I became an Australian resident, and soon I’ll be a citizen. Yet, the feeling of being threatened by the very environment around me —the trees, the grass, the pollen —feels like a reminder that belonging here comes with a lot of terms and conditions. I expected that as a migrant, because migration always comes with its fine print. But now that I’m closer to citizenship, I find myself questioning whether I’m okay with those terms after all.
Today, I don’t quite know how I feel about what it means to become a citizen, especially if I decide to leave. But for now, what I do know is that I desperately need to fill my lungs with air. Maybe I’ll find a way to build my own device to vacuum out all the allergens and reclaim some kind of “normal” outdoor life. Or maybe it’s time to sit indoors and reflect on what survival really means in the long run: what it means to face, year after year, the pollen, the uncertainty, and the simple, enduring need for air.
