Painless
It's funny how easily we forget pain.
Mothers always say it, so do people with tattoos.
At the time it hurts so much, but then the torture is over and soon after we find ouselves doing it again. Having another child. Getting more ink on our skin.
It's the same with people who leave.
I remember thinking, when I touched down 10 months ago to the day, in Perth, broken from seven of the best months of my life in Africa, how on earth do people do this? How do they go through the heartbreak of kissing their friends of the world goodbye and returning to the normality of smooth highways and routine. Saying goodbye to the person I was, saying goodbye to ultimate freedom.
Yet, less than a year later I am sitting at the airport, charging my shit, dropping things, careful not to lose my boarding pass, ready to do it all again. To feel the burn inside of taking and giving everything I have inside of me, just to see what will happen. The counting days, hours, dollars is done, I'm here for another tattoo, another child, because I have forgotten what it felt like the first time.
I think it's a survival mechanism. Otherwise we would be scared shitless to do anything after the first time it went wrong. If we could draw on that pain we once felt, there would be a lot of only children and venturing into the great unknown would be a lot more difficult.
So, once again, today I have left the rythym of city life, climbing, crawling and shredding all over the city on the L90 Bus, to see what's out there.
Again.
Painless.