I think the hardest part about travelling is coming home.
You miss it when you are travelling and want to hug the people who love you and
support you. But for me it has really been the hardest part, its the
realisation that while so many things about me have changed and while my appearance
hasn’t really changed I know for certain that my mind has been altered by the
people I’ve met and the places I have visited and although you know that your
different not many others can appreciate it and treat you like you have
changed. After the initial excitement of coming home and being the new thing
around, suddenly normal life takes over. You mentally have to swing your mind
back around to think about jobs, university, and relationships. Your brain is
split it two, thinking that nothing has changed at home and then trying to
input your changed self into a familiar yet strange place.
It was the same when
I came back from Atlantic College, but the difference was that I could call Cat
or Ciara and realise that though we finished school we are still all there for
each other and the understood how much I had changed in the two years I was
away. Now coming back from travelling, while away people are only in your life
for a fleeting few days sometimes even a week but then they are gone to
continue travelling or go home. And yes I have kept in touch with a lot of
people I’ve met and it is a relief to know you can text them or call them when
you feel at loss. But then because you are at home, you start to question the
relationships you had out travelling, where they false friendships? Do they
really know me? But I think for me the
answer is yes they are real friendships and yes they know me. They know me
without the rest of the past events of my life that follow me around at home.
They just know me; they know me as the person I presented and that is such a
freeing feeling and one that I really miss. Here I am the odd person. The one
who runs away.
And frankly I am tired of being put into a box, and I guess when
you get home the hardest part is to fully embrace yourself, the changed self
not just sit back into your old husk and be safe. What gives the people you
know the right to treat you as though nothing is different, if you are
different then just put a mirrored box over your head and reflect all the
assumptions that you will be exactly the same.
Coming home is the hardest thing. But instead of bashing
your head against the wall, I’ve realised I must embrace it, the people around
me and myself. Let myself be changed.
