I’ve always regarded myself as a homebody, someone who is happiest to be at home, doing my own thing and finding pleasure in pottering around the house, finding little things to do. I can’t deny it hasn’t brought me a lot of pleasure over the years, but today I feel something different, and it feels very alien to me.

The girls and I came home last night from a three-day trip away in Springtown. Any other time I’ve gone away, I’ve been slightly homesick and yearning to come back to my creature comforts, but yesterday I didn’t feel that way at all. I could happily have stayed away longer. Today, I feel restless and a bit grumpy at being indoors. I want to be out exploring the world around me, not indoors looking at the same views I always see.

Not only am I already thinking about the next break we can go on, but I’m also questioning my reasons for even living here. Not once in my life have I questioned where we live; not once have I thought about living elsewhere, and all of a sudden it has become the biggest question in my mind. Why do I live in the same place I’ve lived all my life? What does it really hold for us? Am I just settling for an area because I’ve never thought to do anything else?

Why have I ‘accepted’ that life is nothing more than taking kids to school, doing housework, struggling with money, paying bills and not a lot else?

In fact, I’m currently questioning almost everything in my life. Why do I have people in my life that I tolerate more than I actually like, and why do I feel obligated to my sisters and parents when I don’t really have anything much in common with them? Why do I allow the circumstances with Greg and Tom to dictate how, where, and why?

Our three days away really made me realise that as long as I have my kids with me – the only people that mean anything to me in the world – then we could be anywhere in the world and I’d be happy. I’m restless, unsettled and feeling a great, burning need to explore not only the bigger world around me but also all of these new feelings that are emerging before I push them back down, ignore them and pretend that I’m happy being ‘settled.’