10 years in Australia.
I was different yet exactly the same — for what feels like a lifetime ago.
Trigger warning: depression, suicidal ideation (and some great joys, too).
I arrived in Australia exactly 10 years ago today. It was a cold morning, the air was crisp, and the sky was clear. I remember thinking it was the biggest and highest sky I’d ever seen. A friend I was meeting for the first time picked me up at the airport. Sydney has a different kind of coldness compared to where we both came from. We were going to the same college and had got connected through a mutual friend. Though the reason why we ended up in Sydney is a story for another day.
We are still good friends today, even though we went on different paths after graduation. I am an Australian citizen now, working as a designer in the startup scene. She left Sydney to become a flight attendant and then a business owner. She got married, and I got partnered. We catch up when I visit my birth country. We talk twice a year. She’s one of the oldest friends I’ve got.
The world felt bigger that day because my world suddenly became bigger. Sydney Airport is certainly much bigger than Tân Sơn Nhất Airport. There were fewer people, too, having made this vast land feel even emptier. I was in a different country, a different world almost. And…
