Being Home Again

I find being home here in Colorado after such an extended stay away from it rather perplexing in several regards. It is quite a unique position for a variety or reasons, in many ways it is very comfortable and in others it is very uncomfortable. This is particularly true in the regard of people I know, but even in the case of simply seeing places I have seen a million times before (or some uncountably high number of times anyway). These places I have seen repeatedly and yet they are in a way somewhat new to me. They draw back several memories, and yet no novelty, or at least no novelty in an inspiring way, the way living abroad and seeing new things everyday does. Being here in Thornton I find it very boring, Thornton lacks a great variety of things to do or see, I find simply going to places like Best Buy or Walmart to be entertaining the way I would find going to Parliament and Westminster Abbey entertaining in London. I know this must sound terribly snobbish, but it is simply the demon I am trying to conquer at this time. I find it extraordinary to be here too, for I did not realize how much I had forgotten, I did not realize what would be new or different to me. I thought things would change more, and yet I was far more okay with the changes that did happen than I knew I would or could be. I am so much more open now, to all sorts of things, experiences and ideas.

I know more of who I am, yet I find myself timid here and I don’t understand why that is. There are so many factors to this I am sure, but for one thing as a wise friend of mine considerately pointed out, I was away for six months in several different cultures, each of them foreign to my own and therefore I was quite hyped up and on my guard for that time. Then he demonstrated that being back I still had my guard up and had a tension of being in a familiar and comfortable situation with my guard up. I agree with this in many ways, plus there is the factor that when I was abroad I made many friendships but they were shallow (and pedantic [from Family Guy]) in as far as they were rather short lived and had no background knowledge to them, the way that my friendships at home did. My timidity has also to do, I believe with the fact that I am no longer in a place were I possess a great degree of anonymity (as I did abroad) and I have more to fear of rejection and erring here. I have had so many things happen when I returned that made me not want to return and which in several regards are now pushing me back away. I find all of these situations (which I shall not name here) disturbing, upsetting, and ultimately very difficult to return to. By the same hand, I find that these situations, which would have bothered me a great deal seven months ago, are far easier to handle than they would have been at that time. I am hardened, I can handle greater stress in many ways than I could have in some ways, and I can definitely take bad news with a better acceptance than I could for most of my life. This is not to say that I am by any means pleased with the way things have happened in this way, but I am happy that I now know that I can in fact handle any and every thing.

One other feeling I should like to describe tonight is my apathy and difficulty with motivation in being back. I feel like since I’ve been back that I don’t want to do much save to see people, watch DVD’s and eat out. I find such grave difficulty in even meeting new people, I don’t want to write the many works I have stored up since being in Europe and Africa. I can’t motivate myself to study my languages, or even read. In this vain, I certainly have little ambition to search for employment and even to some extent an apartment, or communicate with people via email that I should keep in contact with. I don’t feel awful, in fact I feel fairly relaxed, but I feel I have lost my muse and that I already need a change of atmosphere. I don’t know what to do at all, and not going back to school, and not having a job lined up it is hard. I have no income, and yet I love having all of this time off and feel that if I were to devote myself to something like work that I would be trivializing my talents as pompous as that is to say. Yet, I can’t motivate myself to utilize my talents for anything that I would deem more worthy anyway. I know and understand that this apathetic and unmotivated attitude is common to most people after such an event as I have just completed and I feel okay with that, it is simply frustrating to have had all of these grand ideas about how I was going to conquer the world when I returned but then not have the desire to carry this out, actually being back. I know in time, and perhaps sooner than I know, I shall indeed carry out most of them, I’ll write my novel and other essays, take up painting, and create my stop-motion animation film projects, as well as creating my planned website. I know I’ll find a new apartment, perhaps even a vehicle, but I just want so desperately to create, to express myself, especially about my experiences and the multitude of thoughts and attitudes I have accrued abroad. I feel I had so many revelations, I feel I worked and was ambitious and always productive in Britain, I wrote my experiences every day, but here not.

I know I’ll get back into the groove, and be a far better person than ever I was, I know it, but it is just the frustration of apathy versus such a deep desire. I know in the end I’ll be the best person I can be, I’ll create, I’ll be good to those around me, and I’ll be deeply caring, but until I can really achieve that I’ll sit in a sort of somber gloom, longing and waiting as I figure this thing out called life. I know I know, how profound.