““No one packs a backpack and travels the world alone if they have everything in their life figured out.””

I usually write when my heart hurts, as that is when I feel the most alive. It’s as if in order for me to feel truly and deeply, it has to spark something in my heart. In the past it was because someone had left. Because someone had hurt me, because someone didn’t choose to stick around as long as I had hoped. Each time I knew that it was for a reason and each time it got easier. By the time the last heartbreak came around, I was able to think about it rationally- “This just means they weren’t the one, and that the good one is still out there. How exciting.”

This way of thinking changed my life. I don’t know when exactly something inside me changed from thinking I need another person to complete me to knowing that I am already whole, but whenever it happened, it was in Australia. And whenever it happened, it was in the last eight months.

I am not writing right now because someone has hurt my heart nor because someone has left. I am writing right now because of the opposite.

I packed my life into two suitcases and booked a one way ticket to Australia. I had no plan other than a screenshot of the country split up by month to chase the sun. It’s not that I dislike cold weather, I just prefer to leave the house and leave my need for a jacket with it.

I arrived to Manly five days before I turned twenty six at the house of my godmother. She so graciously extended her home to me without even truly knowing me that well. “It’s not about the amount of time you’ve known someone, it’s about the feeling you have when you’re with them,” she told me. Her words stuck with me.

I spent a weekend with her once in 2020 when I was last in Australia and the Covid-19 pandemic struck the world like lightening, only instead of a single bolt, the world’s sky was lit up with electrical zig zags and no where was safe.

I remember Carla and I laughed so hard until we cried and we danced until two in the morning. She was right, it wasn’t about how much time we spent together or how long I knew her. It was about the happiness I felt around her. And I felt it again in 2025.

December was month one and it was just the beginning of what I had no idea would turn into eight. I figured by Christmas Day I would have a backpack packed and would head North to get lost.

I was emotionally lost. Not sad, not heartbroken, just lost. I figured what better place to find myself than in a country that welcomes backpackers so freely- we are the most lost you know.

No one packs a backpack and travels the world alone if they have everything in their life figured out. If they knew where they were going they wouldn’t have left where it was they were in the first place.

It’s contradictory you know, kind of like an oxymoron. That the people who know where they are going in life, don’t ever seem to leave where it is that they are- and the people who have absolutely no idea, are the ones who do.

I had a visa that gave me a year, a suit case filled with random things I might need one day, ready to be dissected into things I need that day, and a goal unbeknownst to me that I wanted to find my forever place.

It wasn’t until Christmas Day came around that I couldn’t bring myself to leave and I realized I had found a place that made staying easier than going.

I rarely unpacked my suitcase when I traveled. In fact, I am writing a book about a girl who time travels and I wrote that her travel sized shampoos stay lined in her shower should she ever decide to leave quickly. I wrote about how she falls in love with a fellow time traveler. But he always unpacks, no matter how short the stay. That’s just him, and that’s just her.

And so when I watched as he unpacked his bag for a hotel stay of just two nights and neatly fold his shirts inside the armoire, I was reminded of my book. In that same book the time traveling girl watched the man unpack and something inside of her recognized him.

There I was, having arrived to the chalet in Chalais and once again watched him unpack.

“There’s some space here for you.” He pointed to the closet shelves.

“What do you mean?”

“Well if you want to unpack.”

“You know I am writing a book about a girl who time travels and never unpacks.” I told him as he stopped folding his shirts and looked back at me in surprise.

“You’re writing a book?”

“Yeah and the man she falls in love with always unpacks.” Something inside of me recognized him.

It was a new feeling not to have any desire inside of me. I usually feel as though I am searching for answers. I feel as though if I stop moving I’ll miss out on something. What? I have no idea. And so I’ve always kept moving. Life has rewarded my movements with experiences I could have only dreamed of, and mine had a miraculous way of coming true.

I left my godmother’s and took an Airbnb. I went from living with a family of three, having a newfound sixteen-year-old brother, and waking up to greetings from a dog named Murphy, to being all alone. Alone, but with a little place to call my own.

I spent three weeks in that Airbnb because it was all I could afford. I had no idea where I would go after January 11th, but I knew I would figure it out. Anyone who knows me knows that three weeks was plenty of time.

I woke up alone and went to sleep alone. I filled my days with a new found hobby of pilates at the gym down the street from me. There are so many trials in Manly, it made it hard to only sign up for one at a time and so as I passed a big blue window that said “99 dollars for two weeks unlimited sauna and cold plunges,” I folded. Who would have thought that after those two weeks, it would become a home away from home?

When my trial was over I asked if they were hiring and while the past year they had no vacancies, the universe seemingly was sending away a couple of people on their own nomadic journeys. Sure enough mine came to an end.

Before it did, I checked out of my little Airbnb and spent a couple of days at my cousins where I then flew to Adelaide to road trip with a girl I met in December on a night out and tied her shoe. Whirlwind of a sentence, but that’s a perfect example of my life.

Before that, I had five days in between overstaying at my cousins and the road trip. So I decided to go to the Melbourne Open. It was one hundred dollars for a week pass of watching the tennis outside of the arena, and I thought how funny it was that three weeks really was enough time for me to figure it all out.

I stayed in the hostel of a German girl that I previously met one day in Sydney, and went for drinks with Viennese girl I met my first week in Sydney. That night I met her Italian lover she was living with the past month in Melbourne, who brought along one of his friends, who I then met up with in Sydney for Mardi Gras a month later.

Five months later, I was visiting Rose in Vienna just before training to Switzerland to see friends I had made two years before on a chance encounter of a chance encounter of a chance encounter.

When I arrived in Vienna, she had written on her mirror “Welcome to my home Lily. My home is your home.” A couple days later when I stepped off the train in Switzerland and used the key Njara left for me in the mailbox of her apartment, I found another note from this friend that said “Welcome home Lily.” It was in this moment that I realized home is not found in a place, but rather in people.

From the outside looking in, it might look like I have all the money in the world, but really what I have is a world filled with people who I love and who love me.

I have a world filled with opportunities that have arrived at whichever doorstep it is that I am currently residing in and a world that says “Here is a way, take it if you’d like.” The privilege I have in life, is my detachment from the word “No.”

This detachment of mine to the word “No,” doesn’t conclude that I have an attachment to it’s rival “Yes,” but rather that I know what kind of life I want and have learned to say no to anything that isn’t that. How lucky I am to get to live a life where “No” is rarely used.

I did the roadtrip with the girl whose shoes I tied and Rose. Rose used her own mantra of the universe, “Porque no?” And she jumped in the car with us.

When I returned from that road trip I began my job at the sauna, I moved into a crazy house with crazy people (short lived), and by March I had not only unpacked my suitcases into a new peaceful paradise, but even had storage under my bed to keep them after they were empty.

November Lily stayed moving in December, January, February, and March. Those five Lily’s stretched and bended, floated around and then grounded herself. It took all that moving to finally become still.

Come April, I had found contentment. There was no where and no one I was missing, no person, place, or thing. I was happy with my job at the sauna, with my habit of watching the sunrises, and seeing the smiling faces of strangers walk through the doors of my work place. I didn’t necessarily know where it was I was going next, but for the fist time in my life, it mattered less to me.

I think that’s why I fell in love with Manly. Like my god mother had told me, it wasn’t necessarily that I knew it well or how long I had spent there, it was the feeling it gave me. The feeling I had never experienced elsewhere.

I attached so much gratitude to this small little town thinking I had found my forever place based solely on the feeling of contentment. What I would soon be reminded of come April, is that there is a difference between contentment and happiness.

I began this piece of writing by telling you that in order for me to feel truly and deeply it has to spark something in my heart. Manly was everything I needed during a time I was trying to find myself.

When I was lost the last thing I needed were fireworks and rollercoasters. I needed solitude, sunsets, and sunrises, waves, and subtle changes that you look back on and realize how big they actually were. I needed the constant movement the universe gave me since turning twenty six in Sydney. But a spark? That it was not.

Rather it was a calmness that came over me since turning twenty six. A sense of being. Rather than believing everything would work out, it became an awareness that it simply would.

I love Manly for that. For its ability to help people find themselves. It can show you the most beautiful pinks and oranges in the sky, and introduce you to the most wonderfully thoughtful people. It will show you a life of health running at six am and surfing at seven. It will give to you everything you didn’t know you needed, and everything you have ever wanted. If you are lucky enough, it will always be there for you. Welcoming you back with open arms.

April Lily- May, June, and July Lily, well she is quite different from the versions that came before. She is twenty six and eight months, and those eight months are very important. Without them it would have been impossible to get ready for the life that is in store for my next four.

I felt that spark again mid April-when the man who always unpacks walked into my life. The little life I had created in Manly that I was so content with- that seemed to be the path I was walking down, that calmed my passion for desire- that little life was turned upside down and then inside out.

I knew he wasn’t staying in the bubble of Manly for very long and it wasn’t until I saw him pop that bubble- I then realized I was in one also.

There is nothing wrong with bubbles, in fact I am quite mesmerized by them. How something can float so effortlessly though the air, reflecting back what looks at it, while also being entirely see through.

The bubble of Manly is just that. It showed to me all the parts of myself I hadn’t seen before. Whether I wasn’t looking close enough or I didn’t want to see, it was all staring back at me now.

I decided to grow out of the parts of myself that I didn’t want to stare at anymore. I began to look through the bubble rather than stop at it’s surface. By the time the man who always unpacks walked into my life, I was truly in love with everything staring back at me. I had become whole and the universe gifted to me the greatest reward- self love.

Because it is only when you want to love yourself that you can begin to truly love someone else. And not only that but also receive back the love that you want as well. Notice I don’t say that you have to love yourself before you are able to love someone else. I don’t like that quote. I think that with the right love it will teach you to love yourself. And like with learning anything, you have to want to.

And so I say to you, as long as you want to love yourself, trust me when I tell you that there is someone out there that will come along and help you do just that. You will not only fall in love with them, but you will get to experience falling in love with yourself.

When you can look at your bubble and begin to see clarity at what is beyond it, that is when it just might pop. You no longer need the bubble to see it, the life you have been waiting for is right in front of you.

I love Manly for its solitude, its sunsets, and sunrises, its waves, and subtle changes. I love Manly for its seasons and for showing me the seasons that live inside of me. I love the bubble it gave to me, and I love it even more for popping.

Because now I am ready to live the life I have always dreamed of.