Pressing “play”

Journeying home from Melbourne

The last blog I wrote for the Nexus was about how difficult it is to come home.  Even though I was fully armed with that knowledge this second time around, knowing that only helped to brace me for the impact.  Coming home just seems to get stranger each time and with each passing month that I spent abroad, I got farther and farther away from the life I had.  I am realizing that there are motions I have to go through in order to press play on a life that’s been in the pause position for so long, and coming back to Santa Barbara has made me feel the enormity of the past year.  Intensely.

So how has this been? What is it like coming back after such a long time away?

Well sometimes I feel like I’m moving in slow motion, like I am five paces behind everybody else, desperately trying to grab ahold of some kind of reality, to some kind of new life.  I feel like things happen suddenly.  In fact, these days, life seems almost too sudden.  I think it is odd that all I did was move my feet across a divide onto an airplane and surroundings that I had grown to love and appreciate over five months just suddenly melted away.  It feels like I have sustained a terrible loss.  I wake up most mornings slightly confused about where I am and how I’ve gotten here as I run through mental lists of places I’ve been.  Living in Santa Barbara again feels arbitrary.  I haven’t called this place home for 13 months, yet here I am again after a tornado of change, in surroundings that are at the same time deliciously familiar yet strangely foreign.  In some ways, I feel like I’ve just been jolted out of a deep, yearlog unconsciousness.

The strangeness that comes with returning to Santa Barbara is also accompanied by a deep nostaglia about a year that flew by.  I miss being abroad every day.  The list of things tht I miss is quite long.  I miss bieng the foreigner.  I miss having an accent.  I miss driving on the left hand side, colorful Australian money, and saying “good on ya” or “ta.” I miss tapas, sangria, and the rude way Spaniards answer the phone.  I miss going for long, meandering walks every day in faraway lands, speaking Spanish, and talking with my host mom whenever I felt like it.   I look at my pictures often and wistfully, and I am beginning to feel disconnected.  Being abroad already feels so long ago, and I can’t believe I was ever in those places that are now framed on my desk.  This whole experience has been a surreal dream that I often think couldn’t possibly have happened to little old me.

While my head, on the best of days, is spinning, I am trying to take it all in stride and hit the ground running so I can find my place at UCSB again.  I know what things I need in order to readjust: I’m working, reconnecting with old friends, and trying to get plenty of exercise and sunshine.  I need to keep busy, talk to my friends and family when I’m not feeling okay, and assess my needs often.  But above all, I need to accept a certain truth: my reality will never be the same as it was pre-EAP, and it’s easier to work with that truth than to try and smush myself into a mold I no longer fit.  I need to take my new views and apply them to my post-EAP existence.  I need to throw myself at the life the way I did when I was abroad.  I realize now that familiarity in a place does not preclude adventure or wonder or discovery there.  I never want to stop marveling at all there is to see in the world.  I’ve just had the most beautiful experience and it’s brought me more joy than I have ever known in my life.

So despite all the weirdness and the times where I feel less than great, I am optimistic about this final year here.  I am in constant search of my own joy, and the future looks damn good from where I’m standing.  So if you’re still with me, dear Nexog readers, this newly reborn citizen of the world thanks you for reading.  It’s been real.

Happy trails everyone.