Entre pairos y derivas

So here I am and here are some words. I have more to say about various things, but I need to begin somewhere. And I also have stupid youtube videos to post so I can close the tabs before my poor creaky computer explodes.

So where to begin...?

I've been back in the UK for, I think, almost four weeks, although I can't quite believe that. Leaving Mexico was, as I knew it would be, one of the hardest things I have ever done. Perhaps other things have hurt more, and there could and will be worse things I know, but it was breathtakingly, enormously painful. In the days before I left, the tears and sense of grief overwhelmed me often and without warning. Sometimes, watching a street go past a car window, or something equally ordinary, I would find myself suddenly unable to breathe with something like panic, knowing that soon I wouldn't be seeing this or or being here at all any more. Ridiculous, perhaps, in this house of horrors of a world, but there it is.

At the end of July I came back to the UK on a last-minute and entirely crazy trip - I was on UK soil for less than a week - for an interview for a dream job (which I didn't get, of course) - they insisted on a face-to-face interview and I hoped the gamble might be worth it. The whole thing was exhausting and emotional. I couldn't countenance losing those few days from my time in Mexico, so I ended up pushing back my flight by more than two weeks.

But, in the end, all my time slipped through my fingers like sand anyway. My work went on and on and on, particularly one hellish project that made my life a misery for a long time and that I tried very, very hard to finish and still had to hand over incomplete - after I ended up, by then desperate to quit work and do other things, trying not to sob while I blurted out to my boss that I felt trapped, like I would never escape. But there were still lots of things to finish off, of course, and I also massively underestimated quite how long it would take to pack up my apartment (and sort it all out, and throw stuff away, and recycle stuff, and ship stuff, and give stuff away, and sell stuff, and send my borrowed furniture back whence it came, and so on). Because it really does take a bloody long time. Add to that a little bit of sickness, innumerable errands, some misjudged social commitments, and some good times seeing friends, and sprinklings of tiredness and sadness and godawful weather, and my hoped-for four weeks exploring my beloved Mexico and researching for my book dwindled to three, then two, then one, and finally nothing. A stolen hour or so taking pictures of my town in between chores.

The whole thing was a terribly depressing process, constantly and unremittingly having to give things up. Realising one by one each thing I wouldn't be able to do or finish, each person I wouldn't have time to see again, each anticipated attraction I wouldn't get chance to see, each familiar place I wouldn't be able to go back to, each beloved possession I realised I'd have to leave behind, each fun thing I wouldn't do again. A process of letting go by force as each thing was tugged from my grip.

What a terrible feeling it is to know that time is running out, that there isn't enough time, that there is no more time left. The uneasiness that is the knowledge of our own mortality, magnified.

As the day, the hour of my flight approached I felt like I was being ripped from my life, torn away from my fabric of people and things and places and activities, from so many things undone and plans unfulfilled. And I felt it bitterly - weepingly, shudderingly, chokingly. And intensely physically painfully. I wasn't ready to go, not one bit.

I thought I might just fall apart altogether on the plane, but I didn't. The practicalities of travel required attention. I sat at the departure gate listening to two or three songs over and over with a strange calm. I slept on one plane. I fretted through US immigration and nearly missed another plane. I sat next to the sort of person who makes me turn my emotions inside to keep them safe coming anywhere near them. I struggled home from the airport on a journey of absurd hellishness. And by the time I got there I don't think I felt anything at all. I was perfectly frozen.

In retrospect, of course, I was protecting myself. For a week or two I barely thought about Mexico at all, except for the odd, quick, wincing moment. I didn't do much at all except sleep.

It is, predictably, not terribly good for me to be back in my family home. It is a step backward, away from adulthood and independence and being myself and being alive. A sort of hopelessness and lassitude steals over me. I'm a lot worse even than usual at getting things done. I have been spending a lot of time trying to sort out a lifetime's worth of crap - at the moment my room is so full, and so chaotic - that I don't even have space to unpack. This isn't good either, as I am constantly taken back to being 15 or being 20, and trying to make impossible decisions about where to put things when there's nowhere to put anything, and trying not to be driven to despair by years of unsorted photos and papers. This is not entirely a hopeless task - I am finally learning to get rid of stuff and to let things go, not before time - but it often feels like one.

Not thinking about Mexico scared me. I was afraid that I might just let it pass painlessly and quietly out of my memory. So I began to let myself think about it a little bit, even though it hurts. I listen to songs in Spanish although they rub raw nerves. I glance quickly at photos. I think about places I knew. I miss Mexico. I am afraid that what I really want is to be there, to live there for good - a big, frightening thing to have to consider.

I have been in a bubble. A bubble of not feeling and not engaging. A bubble of not blogging, and not phoning or emailing or seeing anyone. A bubble of sleeping at the wrong times, stuck on Mexico time and tired from trying to fix it. A bubble of not really being. But bubbles, of course, can't last. I have been looking for jobs and I hope that once I find one I can start another proper real life of seeing people and doing things. In the meantime, it's time to get off my arse and stop wasting my precious time, to take back control of my life. To hoist the sails and take the wheel. To embrace where I've been and work out where next.

So, fingers crossed, I skipped a night's sleep and now I'm more or less back on track. I'm thinking about how to develop my professional skills. I'm trying to be effective sorting and organising my stuff, and not overwhelmed. I'm slowly getting back in touch, shamefacedly tackling all those unanswered emails, writing these words. Sorry I've been gone, but I'm back.