Why it might be time to break up with the city

I’m writing this from the small balcony of my two-bedroom rental apartment, located in an inner-city suburb of Sydney.

Across the road, there is a pocket of two-storey terraces I gaze at every day during my morning coffee; the type of home that I had come to dream of owning one day, ever since making the move to this city — that was over 10 years ago now.

Lately, this is a typical day for me, and it’s during these mundane moments when I notice that my rose-coloured glasses for the city have begun to fade.

I grew up in a small coastal town, one which had no traffic lights, few job opportunities, and the chances of bumping into someone you knew, forcing you to participate in dreaded small talk, always seemed likely.

It was only natural that when the opportunity arose to make the move to Sydney for work (at the sprightly age of 21), that I would quickly fall in love with the city’s colourful personality, endless possibilities, and thrilling anonymity.

As the years passed by, I found myself in the most challenging relationship I’ve had, not with another person, but with this city.

Unsurprisingly, one of the main reasons for this is Sydney’s relentless property market. There’s no other city in Australia that chucks around the word “million”, when it comes to property prices, quite so willy-nilly like Sydney.

With a median house price of over $1 million, and not moving, hopeful first-home buyers such as myself can’t help but feel deflated.

So now I find myself widening my property search, dreaming of a tree or sea change – like an unfulfilled partner secretly on the lookout for something new on a dating site.

It’s a constant push-pull, forever justifying the logic behind the possibility of buying a one-bedroom apartment over a three-bedroom beach house or country home for the same price.

What’s more, I can’t help but notice the correlation between my anxieties and the movement of the city. 

Take driving, for example.

It’s not until you find yourself meandering through the countryside during sunset, or steering through a traffic-free route to the beach in a coastal town, that you’re reminded that driving in the city is hardly driving at all.

Instead, it feels more like a taxing combination of painfully slow bumper-to-bumper traffic, and frantically changing lanes to get nowhere fast.

But perhaps the biggest giveaway is this – now more than ever, I feel a growing longing for space. 

I want more space for both my husband and I to work from home; a new normal that we’re currently adapting to.

And with the hope of starting our own family in the future, a backyard would be ideal; space for kids to jump on the trampoline and play under the sprinkler during a hot summer’s day – the same childhood simplicities we were both afforded growing up.

As idyllic as that sounds, truth be told space may never be a luxury I can afford to obtain in Sydney. And if there comes a time when neither I nor the city can come to a compromise, then I’ll be prepared to admit that it may be time to move on.

In which case, I hope that someday, somewhere, when I’m sipping my morning coffee from my sunlit verandah, soaking up the salty air from the nearby beach (my new goal), I’ll think of my days spent living in the city fondly. Not sorry because they’re over, but happy because they happened.