When I lived in Australia I had no immediate plans to leave, indeed I built a house in which I thought I would one day raise my children. But after I left I realised how much of a foreigner I had always felt myself there. Defect is an exploration of my ambivalent feelings for my home country, and how distant I always was from all things Australian.

I wrote this piece intending to build it into a work of fiction, but the subject matter was far too close to me and I couldn’t separate myself from it. It is a raw, honest piece that was quite unsettling to write. It is never a pleasant sensation to realise you are so disconnected from everything and everyone you’ve come from, but in writing it, I was able to put more of a finger on exactly where the disconnect lies.

Defect is complete at 1500 words.