Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
Songs of the past, songs of the future. Songs that bring tears to your eyes, songs that break your heart. Songs that bring to mind your first love, your first child. The song you danced to at your wedding. The song your heart was singing when you felt that you could never sing again. The words of the song may be what is meaningful for you or it could be the melody. For me the song that reminds me most of my first year in Australia as a very young 19 year old, is John Denver’s Country Roads. Though he was singing about places I had not been to, the words carried me back to my home and the people I longed to be with. Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong… Those words made me heart sick with longing for my home, my mother, my family, my niece and nephew who I loved dearly, all of whom were no longer around. I felt bereft. I was living half a life where nothing seemed to make sense. I went to work every day and watched TV every night. I ate a lot of dinner. I think I ate too much partly because my aunt made me eat anything left in the dish because she didn’t want to put it in the fridge; I ate a lot of ice cream, even though I didn’t particularly enjoy it. I ate my sadness and longing for the place I called home. I ate my fears about the new country I was in, where everything was so different. I ate my longing for the chaotic neighbourhood I grew up in. The whitewashed suburban life I lived now was such a far cry from the topsy-turvy in-your-face neighbourhood I had lived in, back in Sri Lanka. I felt as if I had stepped into a colourless version of life where every day was lived in a monotony and cycle of sameness. It was numbing yet normal.