I haven’t written for this blog in a long while. My last post ended with me expressing the desire I had already held for a while – a desire for change. I wanted – needed – something in my circumstances to change. As of that posting, I had been job-searching in Australia for five months. Now we’re going on eight. Because nothing has changed, I have felt that I didn’t have anything to write.

Now something has changed, but the change came from within rather than my circumstances. I still don’t have a job or my own place to live or a community. This week that fact broke me, and the breaking was a catalyst for change.

It was a bit of a journey to get to the true breaking. First I was confronted with the mistakes I made, the different paths I could have taken, and just some general feelings of utter inadequacy. Then I experienced the most deep sense of apathy I think I’ve ever felt in my life. For a day I genuinely didn’t care what happened next. It turned out to be the perfect day to make follow-up calls and send out another lengthy application that I was able to bang out in just a couple hours. When you have little care for the result, you’re no longer standing in your own way.

Following the apathy, I was scared. I was scared of what failing to get a job here would mean practically, I was scared of the prospect of returning to the States, but perhaps most of all, I was scared of letting people down. I was the young adventurer they sent off into the world. I was the family member come from far away to be part of my Australian family – what if they thought I had pulled a fast one on them?

You see, over this past week I came to a tough conclusion. I discovered that I had applied to approximately 70 jobs of near-every variety during my time here. I had received feedback on one particular position that confirmed a couple of ideas to me. The first being that my being American is a true detriment in a foreign country. It would be better put this way: it is a detriment that I wasn’t raised in Australia. If hiring managers are looking at people with similar skills, similar applications, they will always choose the Australian. And why not? That’s how it would work anywhere else. In order to overcome that, I would need some excellent experience and skills or a fantastic connection – things I simply don’t have.

I broke down. Regular life doesn’t usually make me cry. I’ll cry at the drop of a hat in a movie, book, even an excellent commercial. But in my day-to-day life I’m usually too happy or too stubborn to cry. But so many months of desperately trying to get a job, so many months of hard work without results, such a long period of chilling loneliness finally broke me. My mom called me for a video chat, and I crumple-faced, thoroughly-exhausted cried to her.

I had been confronted with the hopelessness of my situation, and I knew that something had to change. But this time I knew that I had to change it. This was no longer a test of my endurance. This time in Australia, this endless job search was meant for something other than just teaching me the rewarding values of perseverance, apparently.

I decided it was time to make what I’m dubbing a “strategic retreat.” I need to leave this country in the hopes of one day coming back smarter, more prepared. I hope to find work in the United States that can help me one day reach my career goals in Australia. That has been an important aspect of my finding peace with this decision – this is not goodbye to Australia forever.

And I have found peace. That has been the most recent phase of this whirlwind of a week. I believe I did the best I could with my given situation, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t meant to get a job here. Though I was unable to really lay down any roots, there are some things I will miss. I’ll miss the family I’ve become close to terribly. I’ll miss the sausage rolls and meat pies. I’ll miss the books and other items I picked up here that I’ll have to leave behind. Underpinning all that missing is the sense that this is the right decision. I know myself. I know I wouldn’t be comfortable returning to the U.S. if it weren’t the right decision at the right time.

It’s nice being able to trust myself with this call, to feel like I know myself well enough to choose the next steps. You see, I came here in large part to find myself – but somewhere along the way, I lost myself instead. Part of the reason I wanted to come to Australia was to explore this side of me, to connect with my Aussie family, and see how I fit into the culture. But all this time alone made me feel completely lost for a while. The constant rejection made me feel worthless. For someone so accustomed to succeeding at her endeavors, not even getting any interviews dealt some serious blows to my self-esteem.

But sometimes losing yourself can be a good thing. Sometimes being broken can be a good thing. You have to be the one to go searching for your missing pieces. You have to be the one to choose who you want to be and what parts of yourself you can be most proud of. Michelangelo reportedly believed that a statue already existed in every block of stone, and it was the sculptor’s job to discover it. I feel like I’m closer now to that marble statue of myself. I’ve been stripped of my false pride, my inability to get my head out of the clouds has been chipped away, certain insecurities have been smoothed out. I no longer feel like a dinghy bobbing about in the waves, unable to steer myself. I feel like a marble statue emerging from its slab of stone, resting its feet surely on the ground.

That simile can only take me so far – I don’t know where these marble feet of mine are going to take me. And I am open to the many possibilities before me. I merely feel like a more solid version of myself than I have before, and that’s pretty exciting.

So thank you, all of you who were praying for me, wishing me well, and believing so sincerely that success would come in my venture down under. I hope that there is more still to come for me in this beautiful country. But for now my journey is taking a sharp right turn. I’m feeling ready for whatever is around the bend.

P.S. I don’t think I could possibly be more grateful for my housemate’s cat keeping some of the loneliness at bay. Meet Millie.