Coming & Going

When I arrived home for the first time in a year, my friends were waiting outside my house whilst one of them picked me up from the airport. They had a banner and a homemade cake along with a bottle of champagne and strawberries. They welcomed me with hugs and kisses and I felt so much love surrounded by my best friends. I surprised my mum and sister who both cried, and then my grandparents who proceeded to have a BBQ and invite all of my family and friends. They bought in food and drink for the masses and everyone came and with my Grandpa flipping burgers and my Grandma keeping everyone’s glasses filled, it was a day full of love, surrounded by the most important people in the world.

The next week at home was pretty much just like that, catching up with people and telling story after story of my adventures. It was crazy and I was probably a little starstruck when I flew out to Greece to spend the summer there only a week after coming home. 4 months later I came home again with even more stories to tell, I was more than excited to be back home.. But this time it wasn’t quite the same. My mum and sister waited in the car park at the airport and I didn’t see my friends until a week later. I saw my family whenever they could and my friends the same as they were all at university. My younger sister seemed to always be busy with friends and work and things felt tense between us. My bedroom in my family home had been converted to make space for the people actually living there so I was staying in my flat alone more than I had planned. It all felt confusing and suffocating and I wasn’t sure how to deal with how I was feeling, so I allowed my emotions to come out in anger and frustration towards everyone in my life.

I can see now how selfish I was being, everyone around me has been living too this whole time I was away and that doesn’t change just because I have. I see that now and hope that the people I punished in my own delusion can forgive me. Everything changing wasn’t happening to confuse me or suffocate me or make me feel out of place. It was happening to teach me something. It drove me crazy for a while being unable to understand what exactly that lesson was, but like everything else I’ve learnt, I am grateful for this lesson helping me to see a little clearer.

I didn’t want to admit that I had missed home whilst I was away, but there is a sense of calm in walking the streets I’ve known since I was young, in the familiarity of my home city and the people in it. I didn’t want to admit that I had missed my family, maybe because it would be harder to cope if I did, but nothing beats the way it feels to be in the arms of my mother, of my grandparents and my sister. To hold my two stepbrothers and young cousins and of course, my dogs. The joy of catching up with old friends and of making new ones. Visiting places that are laced with memories of growing up and of seeing new ones. I thought that I had gained everything there was to gain from home, and I guess almost given up on it after feeling so unhappy when I first got home. That the only way to continue to grow was to be exploring and feeding my heart’s desire to travel. But, it would seem I was wrong about that too.

Since being home my whole outlook has changed even more, I am much more positive and I feel happy and proud to be exactly who I am. I have been working on learning to love myself and to take proper care of my body and my mind, and finally I am starting to feel like I can say it has all been worth it. I am not perfect, no one is, but I am able to wake up most mornings happy, not only with who I am on the inside but, also with the vessel I live in. Being home made me more afraid than I have been for a long time and I wasn’t sure why, but in my last post ‘To Know Who I Am,’ I spoke of never wanting to go backwards, that moving forwards was the only right thing for me. Reading it now, I think that my fear was not of going backwards in terms of achievement, but with who I am. I didn’t want to go back to being who I was before I left because I know that who I am now shines so much brighter. But I was forgetting that the old me is, and always will be a part of me. Without her, who I am now would simply cease to exist. And in realising this I have not only been able to love and accept myself that little bit more, but also with allowing myself to accept the changes that have happened to the people that I care about, while I was on my own journey.

And so I have allowed myself to love the company of old friends, to rely on them and to need them. To feel at home where I didn’t before and to blend back into family life as though I was never gone. And now, as I get ready to leave it all behind again, I can see that I am so extremely lucky. My friends are an amazing group of people who have done nothing but love and support me and I know now that no matter how far I go or for how long, they will be right there by my side. As for my family, I had allowed myself to think that they didn’t care what made me happy, they only wanted me to stay home and live my life the way they wanted me to. But I see now that what they want more than anything is my happiness and slowly they are starting to understand and accept that this is what makes me happy. They would do anything to see me happy and I am the luckiest girl in the world to be surrounded by them. They love me and I love them, and love alone clouds our judgement and often causes us to lash out in anger at the people who love us most. It is a powerful and confusing emotion, but one that I am forever grateful for in my family and my friends as well as one that we simply could not live without.

Published to WordPress 23.02.19