The next few months are going to be rough. I can feel it already. Only one week into my new environment and I can feel the weight of it on my shoulders, tugging at the pits of my stomach, squeezing my heart and filling my mind with doubts. I have a mission, a vague plan and specific objectives and this may be the best place to accomplish them, and I need to remind myself of that but more poignant is this feeling of isolation and imprisonment.
It’s funny, I know no one reads these posts, or I should say very few, but I still feel bad for the general thread that connects all my musings and expressions. It’s very repetitive, it’s a bit dark, it’s boring. It may be a necessity for me to bleed onto these pages, but it can’t be interesting for those out there who occasionally come to visit. So, with that said, I apologize but I must restate that this is for me and repetition I think is part of my process; constant reminders of where I am, where I’ve been, and to a certain extent where I’m headed.
I’m torn. I know why I’m here and I believe in the decision I’ve made but I can’t help but recognize this sense of heightened loneliness. I somehow expected it, but feeling it is always a bit different. How can I be more lonely in the presence of family and familiar surroundings than when I was completely alone out there? Maybe it’s the lack of options, maybe it’s the lack of foreign faces and the curiosity about them that comes with their entrances into my space. Maybe it’s the lack of potential for something unexpected to happen. I don’t know. It could be a number of things. My mood swings are even more pronounced and contingent on small events now than they seem to have been previously. Haha. I keep surprising myself. I can’t tell if I’m changing or not or just feeling more. It’s strange not to be sure what’s happening inside. I am more connected, but connected to what? To what I’m feeling or to who I am? Are they the same?
I keep feeling like I have a ton to say but as soon as I start typing it somehow all dissolves away like a sugar cube in a teacup and I find myself unable to dig into the crux of it all. It’s been an emotional week or 2. Recognizing my next steps, preparing for the move, then arriving and settling into a completely different reality has been both comfortable and unnerving. I am not meant to be sedentary any more. Sure a couple months here or there is fine, but always somewhere new. Knowing I’m going to be here for a while, living a level of repetition I can predict is a much heavier matter than I think I envisioned. Or maybe not. I knew it would tough and maybe this is just the withdrawal and one of the stages of loss, but it feels like looking into a dark tunnel that you know has an opening on the other side but no light whatsoever for an unknown distance. It’s not that it’s scary, just unknown and bland.
But hey, the situation is pretty simple. I have 6 months that I can legally stay here. I work, I exercise, I meditate, I eat well, I write, I reflect, I reconnect with people I haven’t been in much contact with, and eventually I hope I’ll recharge and prepare myself for the next leg and my return to the warmth of the Latin world before I leave the western hemisphere, likely for good. I know where I’m headed. It’s the intermediary part that’s not so clear. How quickly will I achieve my objectives? It’s up to me I know, but it’s daunting. There’s so much to do and while I’m excited, for the time being I’m not overflowing with inspiration, though with my emotional swings I find some days I’m really pumped and others I just want to curl into a ball and retreat further into myself.