Will Someone Please Tell Me How To Refund These Flights?

Shots shots shots!

One last weekend in Stuttgart was to be unforgettable.

Okay maybe not quite. It’s a little hazy remembering the details.

But the big picture was unforgettable.

Never mind that I had been dumped by text message 24 hours prior. You’re not going to spend your last weekend on exchange miserable said my friends. And I didn’t. A hookup, a hangover, and three days later, I was on a plane, flying back to home, home to the a place I had envisioned spending the rest of my life, arm in arm with the person who had just broken my heart.

Landing back on the tarmac at Adelaide Airport jolted me back to reality. I was home. I was alone. But for the first time in two years, I was free. Mum picked me up from the airport, and after a sleepless and jetlagged night, I dragged myself to the coffee shop down the road to reunite with my best friend of seven years. Also newly single, Kate was struggling to find her feet as her ex-boyfriend was cut from a more manipulative and possessive cloth than mine was. With our hands clasped around warm mugs of coffee, we talked about life in Adelaide, what it was like to be single again, and what the fuck we were supposed to do now.

What if we go to Europe for the April semester break? I asked. A short discussion of where we would go and a sip of our coffees later, it was decided. A week in Italy, exploring Rome, Milan, and the Amalfi Coast, before finding our way to Germany for Stuttgart’s Frühlingsfest. The trip of a lifetime, designed as a means to get away, a chance to figure out who we were outside of a long-term relationship. Our excitement overshadowed any doubt our parents had about our trip, as we ignored the news coming from Wuhan, China.

Do you want another glass of wine?

Day drinking in thrifted dresses at a winery in Lobethal led to a primary-school-style style sleepover and a slightly hungover pair of twenty-somethings booking their flights to Europe the next morning.

In all honesty, the trip was a distraction and a very good one too. My future had felt uncertain for some time, as I questioned whether my degree was right for me. The future I’d envisioned with my ex was the only thing that had been clear. But since the breakup, I’d felt more unsure than ever. Adelaide felt at once too empty and fuller than ever before, as I was forced to go to the places we had been together alone. I hated him for this. The future he’d promised me had been ripped away, and all that was left were fragments of who I was before. So, the trip to Europe was one of the only things in my life that felt certain. That, and the strength that my friendship with Kate had found. Neither of us were sure how to move on with our lives, but as she kept pointing out, an overseas trip with the side benefits of flirting with foreign men and drinking prosecco while overlooking the Mediterranean was healthier than going out and drowning our feelings in Adelaide’s club district every other weekend.

Two weeks after I arrived back home, I was back at work at the pub around the corner. Pouring beers and serving schnitzels was a reminder that I wasn’t completely lost. Work became harder, though, as restrictions started. At first it was just social distancing. One person per every four-square metres. Hand sanitiser on every counter. But as cases of COVID-19 rose in every capital city, the Prime Minister closed every pub, restaurant, and café in the hopes of quashing the virus. I’d lost my job. The Australian borders were closed to international visitors and the population was ordered to stay at home. Our trip was effectively cancelled for us. We, like everyone else, were forced to stay home.

Call me tonight and we’ll have G&Ts and gossip.

Phone calls with friends replaced drinks at trendy bars. Zoom replaced university tutorials. Staying home replaced European holidays. 1.5 metres replaced a hug from your best friend.

Devastated by the cancellation of our trip and panicked by the spread of the pandemic, Kate and I tried desperately to stay in contact. Late night phone calls with homemade cocktails became the norm and we began to realise the distance that had formed between us. We’d never really talked about the bad parts of our relationships, the fights, the anxiety, the huge red flags. Instead we chose to show each other a façade of the perfect lives we had with our partners. Maybe if we had been more honest with each other, we might’ve realised sooner that we were better off on our own.

The time spent social distancing, quarantining, whatever you want to call it, led to reflection. I went through the seven stages of grief, grieving my relationship and our cure-all European holiday. Yes, I might have got a little bit stuck at the anger stage but being forced to stay at home meant that I couldn’t just party my sorrows away. I got to know the four corners of my second-hand desk instead, curling myself up in the desk chair, writing page after page in my journal, something I hadn’t don’t since my exchange. Introspection became the norm and instead of exploring Italian villages and drinking Aperol spritzes, I was left to explore the person I now was.

I hesitate to take major life lessons away from a literal pandemic, but being forced to stay at home meant that my life of never-ending things to do places to see people to meet was put on hold and that taking time to “stop and smell the roses” (albeit the ones in my front yard) was something I needed. Personal growth is as never ending a journey as the process of getting a refund for the airline tickets for our European holiday and it doesn’t have to happen through a grand old trip. Adelaide was only ever meant to be a pit stop, but thanks to forces outside my control, I’ve had to set up here a little longer.

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing either.