Again

You know after flying in and out of somewhere often enough.. there's a certain routine you start to establish.

Going through the customs, buying duty-free alcohol, preparing for the onslaught of warm, humid air, getting your luggage, getting in the car, hugging your family, calling those privileged few on your journey back from the airport, absorbing the changes that have taken place physically, noticeable only by you, unpacking of luggage, bringing out the goodies, changing your wallet, calling more friends, taking a shower...

And then in the next few days, you do exactly the same as what you'd do the last time you came back - sleep loads, fight the jet lag, eat local food, drink local tea, try and switch back to speaking the local lingual (if you don't want to be laughed at by your brothers - and friends, at that), talk loads, start meeting people, go out drinking, have supper at newton, visit the same places, go to church, play for mass...

Suddenly it feels like you've never left at all.

My uprooting didn't feel quite as bad this time - I guess it's probably because I'm only back for two and half weeks; so it feels like I'm on a short-term holiday more than living the alternate reality of my double-life that straddles two countries.

I was absolutely exhausted by the time I reached home. I had to struggle to get two 5,000 word essays over with at end of term. The second of the two I completed by running an all-night marathon again (see falsity of previous post about NEVER doing essays last minute again) on sunday night and didn't sleep a wink - not even 5 seconds. Lasted till Monday night, slept for a few hours - got up, packed, sent the snail-mail part of my MA application, went to the coach station, went to Heathrow, attempted at doing half an essay at the airport, took a 13 hour flight home, touched down, went for dinner... and resumed doing another two 1000 word essays for my MA application which was due 12 midnight Dec 15 - Sg being 13 hours ahead of New York, I had time advantage on my side. After a horrendous sleep-deprived journey, I continued my conscious nightmare deep into the very same night I landed - and only finally got my autobiographical essays done at 6am in the morning, after re-writing about 10 times and still being dissatisfied with it, only to realise I'll never be satisfied with anything I wrote that had this much weight. How can anyone think a life can be summarised by a couple of thousand words! In some strange twisted way, my two short 1,000 word essays were even more excruciatingly painful to write compared to my massive 10,000 word essays. It's a different sort of torture - but both equally agonising.

When I physically witnessed the words on my screen which said: 'Application submitted' - I was so relieved and happy and felt like crying I was at a loss for words. I don't think I've ever forced myself to be so sleep-deprived and acutely conscious at the same time. When I finally collapsed in my bed at 6am that thursday morning, I actually couldn't sleep when I thought I would be out in a mere split second. But my mind was actually thinking so much, stressing continuously, living on caffeine and nicotine... that when the time came for it to stop working - it just wouldn't. I could feel the state of mental activity buzzing in my mind.. it took ages to mentally will myself to shut it down. And then I was truly out. Even the neighbour's drilling and banging and knocking didn't do more than rouse me for a momentary lapse of consciousness.

There's no better term for the aftermath than the word - recovery.
Everything's starting to pick up and resume it's normality now... and that's when I had the time to pause and think - about all that's changed and unchanged.

And that same old conflicting feeling revisits me again - how we can be so absolutely convinced about a certain feeling at a certain moment, so wishful for things to stay the way it was in that past... and how things have progressed since then - and you realised that wasn't what you absolutely wanted, although you felt it then. Which emotion is truer, I can't say. For did you really believe it then, or did you only think you believed it then - if that was the case, does it matter the extent of how much you believed it, when all that counts is that you did believe it before anyway?

Life works in mysterious ways... just because you believed something once..and someone else believe you believed it too... does not make you a sham when you find that you've changed your mind. It's never easy, all it depends is which side of the story you're in - and when you've been assigned your lot, accept it. If only the acceptance came without baggage or pain or unpleasantness... life would be such a whole lot better.
I was not bothered.
But now I find, actually, I am.
Slightly.
But that still counts, doesn't it?
We have to give our stories our dues.
Before time causes it to fade...and morph into multiple forms, moulded by re-memory and perception, that might not have an accurate semblance to the truth.
But all memories are only versions of truth.

There is no real truth...
Is there?