Coming home
I don't really know how to write about the feeling of coming home.
Like suddenly all of the chaos inside my chest is just gone.
"How was your trip?"
"Yeah, good."
It's like the last year has just disappeared. Sitting at a cafe on a Sunday morning like I have done this every Sunday.
I landed in Perth at midnight on Thursday, it felt so weird to fit in. To be enveloped by accents that mirrored mine, Aussie dollars from the atm. The barman understanding my order the first time around.
I haven't made it down south yet, so I don't think the reality of returning has actually set in in earnest. I still feel like I'm missing home, but I don't even know where that is anymore. Maybe I am just missing a place that doesn't exist because I have almost intentionally displaced myself. I belong nowhere but everywhere all at the same time.
I am also strangely un-sad to be back on Australian soil. Usually the feeling of being here hits me with such violence, cracking me in the knees and knocking me to the floor, that feeling that the dream is over. Anguish and desperation at the thought of being stranded back on the island. Almost suffocating in the isolation. Strangely enough, it kind of feels like the dream hasn't even been born yet. That the last year was just a premise for what is in store for me next.
Maybe traveling actually worked. It did actually learn me a thing or two.
It's hard to tell. I feel like the universe inside of me has changed entirely, but somehow I am still the same.
Time feels like a different concept and change feels strangely constant.
I don't really know where I'm going with this, but the bottom line is basically that I'm back. And it tastes strangely sweet.
x
