The wax and wane of travel

I'm lying as still as I can as the pavement rumbles underneath my body. I feign silence, but my mind is louder than the music in my ears. There's a bipolar electricity coursing in my soul right now. I'm still in the process of letting go... letting it all fade away. This strange new future of mine is on the doorstep but it remains obscured with all the gray beyond the window. I keep feeling the lightning in my veins but it's so often followed by the uncertain sensation of all that remains unknown in front of me.

I'm seeking a hand to hold, as if it'll be the salve that will release all that makes me restless through the night. The desire for such comfort makes the barriers of shyness crash to the floor and boldness rises to the surface. It's definitely not a false sense of confidence... just one that seems to be rediscovering itself as it finds itself.

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Thoughts of her pass through my mind, but they have more of a fleeting sensation than they've ever had before. She's still there in the recesses of my mind, but she doesn't want us anymore. And I'm finally at a point where I'm okay with that. The future staring at me in the mirror is an exciting one full of potential. I seek one who inspires me and excites me like this trip has done. I know I've covered these ideas and feelings before, but it's seems like such a long time since I've been really excited about my life. Even when I first moved to China, there was a sense that I was running and wasn't ready and wasn't sure about anything, especially myself. But I'm starting to find that again. I don't think I knew how lost I was while everything was falling apart, but I might've been as lost as she was. I've even had a sense that some of those around me saw that very thing but couldn't or didn't know how to say anything. But I know it now. It's like I was suffering from emotional cataracts, but the milky fog is starting to burn off in the light of this new life.

It's weird... I'm absolutely exhausted right now. I've been travelling for nearly six weeks now and my return to China is a looming reality. I'm okay with it though, other than the daunting idea of returning to work in about 10 days. I'm tired from the travel, from being "up" and excited all the time, from the constant story-telling and experiencing new faces. I haven't spent more than a few days with any single individual this trip, and I'm craving that to a certain extent. I thought I knew what my plans for my week of vacation in the spring were going to be, but that might change. There are so many things I want to know about what's to come, but I know I have to be patient. The older I get, the more I realize that I'm a bit more of a homebody than I ever thought. I guess I should've known... all the time spent in familiar coffee shops around familiar faces back on the familiar, rainy coast or in the familiar, dusty prairies.

On I go, seeking what I crave and all the things that make me feel like me again. Whether that takes the form of an excellent book or delicious food or the sight of a place that I only ever knew in my wild, childhood dreams. I'm beginning to find the Vietnam that I believed in as a child. It was the same with Thailand as my buses traveled north, or in Borneo as my bus rumbled through the jungle. The stuff of dreams...

T