Home - a word that can mean so many different things. To me at the moment, home feels both like a welcome refuge and like just another new place to store my stuff for a while. I'm back in the house where I spent 6 years during high school and college, growing up, playing, working, etc. Its also where I last 'lived at home' (ie, still living with your parents), and the last place where I spent any amount of time with my father before he died. It should feel completely comfortable and relaxing, yet it feels strangely strange to me. Don't get me wrong - it's wonderful to be back in a familiar stable environment and around family again. But the US feels so unusual to me at the moment that it's not quite the blissful release from traveling I was expecting.
My journey back was mostly uneventful - something you really appreciate when you're potentially dealing with the types of problems that occur overseas. No Vietnam customs hassles, the US customs check was even more perfunctory, smooth flight, and no midair emotional breakdowns upon realizing that it was OVER and I was going HOME. The plane from Bangkok to LA was empty enough that I didn't even have a neighbor to pour my heart out to. Lucky for them. Of course, flying from LA into Houston, when Ididn't happen to feel like talking, I was seated next to the friendliest most talkative little grandma who I just couldn't in good conscience ignore.
And then 30 minutes before our arrival, lightening hits the Houston control tower, causing the whole airport to be shut down for an hour and a half. Circling endlessly around Houston (Hey, there's my house. Hey, there it is again. And again.), 5 minutes before our fuel level would have forced us to head to Austin, we were finally allowed to land, dodging little storm cells the whole approach. Welcome back! More excitement than I'd experienced in the past 2 months.And walking through the Houston airport, knowing I was home and seeing so many Americans around, I spent long minutes scanning the crowd for familiar faces, convinced I was gonna run into someone I knew before too long. I mean if you can accidentally bump into friends halfway around the world in Athens or Laos, surely I'd be having a reunion every 5 minutes in Houston?
Though the feeling of weirdness wasn't something I intuitively expected upon returning home, I was warned about it several times by both friends at home and other travelers. But I don't think I was ready for the magnitude of it, the sheer emotional impact it would have. I found myself both seeking company and rejecting it as soon as it was found, as it all seemed too exhausting. Basically I wanted to, and STILL want to, just hide away and avoid any personal contact at all for a while. Having been mostly alone for nine months, or at least without any decent contact with friends, you'd think I'd want to be surrounded by 'em! And though I find myself interacting with folks just fine (how about that - I haven't forgotten how to carry on a conversation), the bottom line is I don't WANT to. I just wanna be left alone so I can sort out what feels like a huge overwhelming mess.
The reasons for this are pretty obvious, I think: I'm tired, both physically and mentally, and in reality probably quite a bit more than I think. Realistically I should have ended the trip at least a month ago, maybe more, yet I kept on pushing to get to the geographical end. Never mind the fact that my riding effectively ceased 3 weeks before I hit Saigon - I still had planned miles to do, and I was gonna do 'em, dammit! And so I did, but in the end it added to overall stress level, despite the lack of riding. So what I really need now is rest. Just a few weeks (or more?) to relax and do a whole lot of nothing. Ironically, an ideal place for me to be at the moment would be in a hut on a deserted Thai beach with nothing to do but wake, eat, and relax. Except somewhere in the US instead.
But of course it's impossible to be gone for so long and not have a lapful of crap to take care of on your return: bills, taxes, film processing, catching up with friends who've been missing you as much as you've been missing them, wrapping up journals and writings, and generally taking stock and planning the next step (which in my case is the usual "what the hell am I gonna do when I grow up" stuff. I'm also idly thinking about the next adventure, but that's a whole 'nother story!) Beyond the tiredness I'm feeling is the significant culture shock. I didn't realize it would be possible to suffer culture shock upon returning home. Jet lag - yes. Fatigue -ok. But culture shock? Walking around in a daze because everything seems so strange, or even wrong? No! This is supposed to be home! It's like coming back to your house on a break from school and discovering that Mom rented out your room to a stranger while you were gone. Home is no longer "home" for you.
Part of this is the unusual level of physical comfort I'm now feeling. Sleeping in a nice cushy bed took a while to get used to. While visiting Brendan in Japan, bed space was at a premium and I ended up sleeping on a thin pad on the floor. But this was no big deal to me - 6 months of nights on rock-hard horse-hair mattresses had me acclimated. So a return to a real mattress was a definite change to adjust to (not that I'm complaining, mind you!). And shopping? In 9 months I haven't seen a brighter, more blinding place than a Houston shopping areas. All the endless acres of parking lot concrete reflect so much sun, it seemed as though I'd been in the clouds for all that time and had finally emerged into the real daylight. I couldn't even dream of handling it without sunglasses. Mom and I went out to Wal-Mart for some stuff (ok, clean undies) the day after I got back. When we entered the store, I initially proposed we split up to do our separate shopping and meet back, but a longer look around convinced me that if we DID part company, I'd end up wandering around in a daze for hours, lost in a sea of aisles and shelves of stuff. Everywhere - stuff! I've never seen more stuff in my life. (And all marked with prices!)
This fixed prices thing is taking a bit to get used to again. It got to be a common running joke amongst any travelers I was with that we'd find ourselves back in the US and going through the checkout line in Albertsons with a gallon of milk, all prepared to say something like "C'mon, $2.75? Safeway has it for 30 cents cheaper - how about $2.50?" And then the other problem is just getting readjusted to the prices here. $40 for shoes? Jeez, they were $15 in Vietnam! I KNOW that bowl of soup should cost 45 cents, not $2.99! And what's up with the money itself? The bills're all the same color! And clean even. (I've never seen dirtier US currency than in Cambodia. I should've checked the dates on the bills -they must have been printed in the 60's.)
I'm also incredibly bored in a manic sort of way. I find myself doing things like switching cd's or tv channels almost continuously, getting tired of every song or program almost before it's begun. (I can excitedly pick out a music cd and then reject it before I even have time to insert it in the player.) I can't relax easily. I dislike being still or involved in the same activity for any length of time. Let's face it - for the past 9 months I was waking up to something new and exciting EVERY morning. And now its nothing but the same old daily routine. Great if you're involved in all the routines which make normal life interesting - career, relationships, families, etc - but monotonous otherwise. (Which seems strange to realize, considering the number of travel days I spent bored or frustrated in some different place, tired of what I perceived as the same old thing!)
I'm already back to work, doing an occasional waiting or bartending job for a catering friend of mine for a little cash. But the first one I did, I had to do nearly all my work in areas that kept me away from the guests, like the kitchen or back rooms. It seemed to me that no activity could be more pointless than that of standing around in expensive clothes, over-eating, and making completely inane small talk. Unless it was actually serving the people engaged in that activity. All that time and energy and money and food used seemed wasted to me. Yet something else monotonous like sawing or chopping wood for a couple of hours is fine -the physical nature of it probably makes it feel very familiar.
But it's not too hard to jump back into normal life again. I can feel myself slowly relaxing and enjoying the little things once more: choices of breakfast cereal, funny-looking clouds, relaxing bike rides in the sun. The same things I was doing overseas, funnily enough. Just doing them in the same place on a new day. One of the things I DO plan on doing soon is heading down into Vietnamtown in Houston to rustle up some now-familiar grub and a rice cooker!
Did I change on the trip? A few people have asked that question and, while I haven't thought about it too much yet, the answer I've come up with so far is "I hope so!". I feel more worldly (duh!), more appreciative of what I have and of what a great place the US can be, more compassionate and understanding, less materialistic (not that I really was before - you can't drive a '78 camaro in Montana and be called materialistic), and more at ease. I just wonder how long those changes will stick around. Oh, well, if they don't, there's always another trip.
See you on the road!
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