To The First World and Back

In less than 24 hours I will be somewhere else, in a different country with a far different culture , speaking a different language, living a different way of life.

Some hundred years ago, it took travellers weeks to reach their destination. During this journey they had time to feel and see the changes happening before them. An hour or a day after they first embark, the landscape changes, the islands disappear and the roads turn dusty. I only have 12 hours. I just close my eyes and when I wake up, I’m already on the other side of the world.

Men of modern civilization call this convenience. But isn’t it an inconvenience as well? The faster the pace, the more inconvenient it is on your inner self.

Here we are trying to untangle the knots of anxieties and worries over changing a way of life, here we are trying to feel better about leaving the people we love and we’re given only 12 hours to transition.

Others will argue that we had all the time in the world to prepare before embarking on this trip. But how can you really prepare when you’re trying to live your life in the moment? When you’re making every second count with the people you love?

I’m not prepared, I’m ill-prepared. I waited two years for this trip, I knew what I was going to do but when I step inside that plane I know for sure my mind will go blank and I will feel so powerless because really, I have no idea what is waiting for me.

I used to have a person I could go “home” to but that person is gone, and this knowledge that I actually do have a life to live even without that person, this makes me nervous because I have nothing concrete to hold on to when I get there. I only have my ideas, my hopes and determination to guide me through. It’s scary but exciting, it’s sad but it’s not.

I don’t know how to feel, really. When people ask me if I’m excited or sad, does it always have to be one or the other? Can’t it be both? Can’t it be a different thing? How can you fathom a multitude of feelings and decide which one to feel within 12 hours? 

Oh whatever. I still have to pack.