I’ve been home almost six months now. Before arriving back in Canada I spent months thinking about how to try and summarize this gigantic event. How can you sum up 648 days of the most different experience to anyone you know? How can you even connect with anyone when arriving home?
Somehow, crawling the walls - so to speak, has only started now. Sure, I’ve had brief moments where I get this dull ache in my gut like when I hear a Spanish song on the radio or something. But now I think the fun and gluttony and frivolousness of the past few months has worn off. It’s not fun anymore. I just wanna be sleeping in the back of my truck at some gas station with 40C heat, eating rice and beans, not speaking the language, wearing clothes that are literally falling off of me and full of holes, fighting cockroaches in my bed before sleeping, showering when the opportunity arises.
At some point, I guess, I began to immerse myself to some extent to the general lifestyle around me. Poor, hungry, unkempt. Arriving home and having the power and the ability to eat as much junk food as possible, buy new clothes, party with my friends, whatever, was like some kind of fairytale.
It’s not as fun anymore, though. I am back to feeling trapped and depressed and spoiled. I want to go back to being free, just driving all day and eating whatever I can find.
How can I summarize any of it? How can I describe things like washing maggots out of my clothes, going days with no running water or electricity, seeing someone get stabbed and bleed to death in the street, watching children beg with babies strapped to their back?
I feel nauseous, and at the same time the most bizarre sort of homesickness you could imagine. But yeah, I am really fucking homesick.
