Coming Home

Photo credit: Elisa Weiss

It is perhaps the one thing in a traveler’s life that is both miraculously comforting and heart-wrenching: coming home. I have been gone from my home town for over a year, and now I am in a place that feels at once familiar and more foreign than a Korean bath house. Not only am I incapable of answering the age-old question “How was your trip?” but I can’t seem to make any of the right decisions as to how I should proceed in the business of coming home. Three weeks ago I was bubbling over with insights into the world I was seeing around me, brave, independent, on-fire with passion for new cuisine, photography, blogging and the great outdoors. And here I am, trying to pick the cob-webs from my poor neglected blog, searching for some way to move through this transition from traveler, to traveled.

Last Day in Australia

I thought that this is what seventeen hour flights were for, to give you time to wrap your head around the fact that where you are coming from is behind you and prepare you for where you are heading, but I see now that nothing can prepare you for coming home. I took my shoes off in a mexican restaurant last week and set them on a nearby shelf while I searched for a spot to sit on the floor…If I try to get into a vehicle on the “wrong side” one more time I think I am going to have to start taking the bus. My body has rejected dairy products and anything but rice for that matter and I can’t seem to comprehend why the whole of America is tweeting their thumbs into a carpal tunneled frenzy??? Has the rest of the world evolved while I have been in a time warped backpacker’s utopia???

A very special airport pick-up

So what is REALLY the best option: See the world, running the risk of feeling out of place in a sort of ephemeral haze…length of this phenomenon still unknown? OR staying put, pondering all of the “other” in the world, satisfied in knowing that they exist, because after all, there are always travel bloggers who will pave the way and write, photograph and share with you their tales of the deep…? At the moment I am leaning towards the latter because assimilating is proving to be futile. I was homesick when I started this blog a year ago, I thought that by writing I could feel more connected to everything that was still happening in the world outside of the exotic one I was functioning in, and I did feel better. So how is it that I am home, and more homesick than I have ever felt, so completely lost, doubtful of every turn, unrecognizable as I see myself operating in a place I not so long ago was at home in?

I have tried all year to make this blog a resource for teachers and travelers, but I’m fresh out of advice on this topic of coming home. The orientation I received at the start of my year teaching overseas would be oh-so helpful now: “How to put down your backpack.” Or “How to re-introduce American food into your diet.” Or “How to briefly tell loved one’s about your experience without starting every single sentence with “When I was in…” ” Or even “How to not feel regretful that you have missed important milestones back home while you were busy seeing the world?” I don’t know the answer to any of these things, I don’t know how to do this? All I can do is publish this little rant and hope coming home will eventually be as easy as pulling apart a fresh, squirming octopus with chopsticks…wait, wasn’t that difficult at one time too?