Peripheral visions

It feels only right that I update the blog now back in Yookay. However, I do not intend to outstay my welcome. There will be a final goodbye blog to come soon.  Bur first, an attempt to share with you a little more of this strange roller-coaster experience as I find my feet on the other side of this big VSO adventure. It's difficult to know what to say. Having travelled many thousands of miles and crossed 2 continents since I last paid any attention to this blog, I do feel a little disorientated. Life has changed immeasurably and yet it is all so familiar. 

But how best to sum up life at this moment? I've gone and come. I left and I'm back. I departed and arrived. I'm not there, I'm here. Is there really any more to say?

I feel lucky to have left Sri Lanka at a time when other volunteers are also having to navigate this same strange transition, returning to whence they came. It helps, this comparing of experiences and somehow trying to put into words just how the world feels and looks from here.

One fellow returnee recently described her sense of being displaced. I can relate to that, and yet I also have a strong sense of returning to where I belong. I figure Brighton will always be home, wherever I am in the world. And having a beautiful new house to settle into on my return has certainly made the whole transition a bit smoother. Another friend suggested it's like a closed window. Looking back on the experience of being in Sri Lanka; you can see it clearly, but can't quite get to it. It's just a little out of reach. 

For me, I think I'd best describe it as being like the hangover from a bizarre and unusual dream. You know, the feeling you can get the morning after a particularly vivid but forgotten dream? You perhaps experience emotions that you can't quite explain. You feel different, but you're not sure what just happened or why. Or, in that space between sleep and awake, the sensation that can hit you as a wave of remembering washes up the colours, textures and shapes, but perhaps not the details, of that forgotten dream. Well, that's how it feels at the moment. The window is not just closed, it's covered with a layer of grime.

Nope, for now at least, I can't really look directly at the experience and tell you much about it. instead, it seems to be my peripheral vision that is working overtime. On the train back from Shropshire, my peripheral vision informed me that I was being stared at by a strange man. I spotted him out of the corner of my eye and, for a few moments, it was perfectly normal... until it dawned on me this is not meant to happen. I am no longer in Sri Lanka!

I never did get to the bottom of why he was staring, but maybe a friend's observation a couple of days later might provide a clue to the mystery. It seems my face is "almost exactly the same colour as my hair"  and grounds not only for staring, but for instantaneous tears of terror from her baby daughter on our first meeting.

Besides the rather disturbing train experience, there have been other peripheral visions. I have "seen" at least 3 gekkos sprinting across the walls of my new Brighton pad in the past week, and when the dogs chased after a stray ball in the lounge just last night, I was entirely convinced for a split second that they had found an unlucky palm squirrel to torment.

So, this is how it is. I'm sad to have left, but happy to be back. All things told, I am doing pretty well. However, I look weird, have one heck of a crazy dream hangover, and am regularly seeing things that aren't there. In truth, I really can't tell you what just happened. As a result, for the time being at least, any questions about my life over the past 15 months will be met with a puzzled expression and some nonsensical mutterings. So, it's probably best we just talk about you. I hope that's okay.