Pieces

This post is overdue. I know myself to be a bit of a procrastinator, but this, i'm afraid, has gotten out of hand.

I wasn't ready. Are we ever really? Ready to face the fact that three very long flights and one very long day returned me home. HOME. I've never been so grateful to see Portland city lights twinkling in the distance, and to finally breathe the air i missed. It was raining. In true Portland style. This city always seems to know how to rain like it does in classic movies.

By the tempered reality of the new year though, the fact that i'm not ready is heaving itself over my shoulders. The fact that home is a place that dosen't exist for me anymore, that will temper even the most skilled of imaginers. You can't live in the sheer bliss of homecoming joy forever. But i've given it a pretty good shot.

No one ever told me that coming home could very easily be the most challenging part of the journey. The part that means rebuilding everything. The part that leaves you flustered, floundering for the pieces of your life you know should be around here somewhere. Like searching for your favorite pair of old shoes buried by a crowded closet. And hoping that when you find them, they still fit.

What is even more funny (or is it ironic? I'm not sure) is that i can't even tell you what it is i learned. What it is inside me that forever changed. I wouldn't know how. And when i speak of this experience there will forever be a secret that i have no choice but to keep.

I know its true, i know that part of me loved every minute of Peru, and another part of me that never stopped being afraid. I know that i came home, but that day, the evening i landed and the following day exist in this foggy, placid dream. Shrouded by the reality of not being able to put it behind me. Searching for closure, roaming the highways of the Pacific Northwest, hoping someday my mind will make it right. And maybe one day i'll have a place to put my stuff that isn't the trunk of the battle scarred old Civic.