Leave room for magic
You ever cry so much you feel like you’re gonna run out of tears?
Yesterday I wept at a train station because I forgot my water bottle on the train. I stepped out onto the platform, immediately realized I’d forgotten it, and turned around just as the doors closed. I furiously pressed the open button and banged on the window, but I just had to watch it get farther and farther away from me through the glass. I felt like I was a forlorn wife, watching my husband drive off into the distance through the rear window of his car, knowing he might not return from the war. But it was a water bottle. And I’m not married.
Most days, I wake and feel like giving up. I just want to buy an absurdly expensive plane ticket and go back home. But back home to what? Not a job. Not a home. Not a country that wants me alive. So I just keep pushing, but more in a Sisyphus way than a Little Engine That Could one.
But yesterday something big happened. You see, I’ve returned to a life of housing instability. I’ve been jumping from host to host, having to book last-minute AirBNBs for a couple days in between. The longest I’ve stayed in a place since I got here is 28 days, and now I’m starting again in 9.
But yesterday I toured a home. It had seven people, which is far too many, and the floors were covered in a diverse collection of debris; but it was filled with queer love and Palestinian flags and it felt so...safe. It was on my way to this home that I lost my water bottle.
A “worrier” is much too gentle a word to describe me. I am a panicker. The whole time I was planning this trip (I did actually plan some if you can believe it) I panicked because what if this and what if that and what if, after all the what ifs happened, I ended up dead in a gutter. If you didn’t know, that’s how all what-ifs end: with you dead in a gutter.
But I had a friend (as I always do) who interrupted my what-ifs with one what-if I never consider: What if it goes well? What if good things happen?
About a month after I moved here, I was eating a cannoli at a gelato shop and I struck up a conversation with a stranger (as I always do). We talked about why they loved Aotearoa. When I finished my cannoli and they were still waiting on their milkshake, I started packing up my things. “Do you have any advice for me?” I asked while I repositioned my book and water bottle (yes, the alleged one) to lay flat in my tote bag. I meant, do you have any advice on where to travel, or do you have any advice on how to fit in, but the advice they gave me was, “You create your reality.” And as if she was right next to me, I heard my friend say (as she always does), “Leave room for magic.”
A couple weeks ago, I finally got a job. It’s being underpaid to walk a dog not enough times a week to cover my expenses; but it is a job. Last week, I met a COVID-cautious family that needs a babysitter. Yesterday, I found a home I could see myself relaxing in. Tonight I had a consultation for a big bucks dog-sitting gig. I’ve even refused to give up hope that someone won’t turn in my water bottle to the transit authorities. Because, even when I do it begrudgingly, when I leave room for magic, I usually find it.
Photographed: Rangitoto Island