Three Months

Three months can seem like an eternity, or it can seem like no time at all.

Three months is roughly the amount of time I spent just in Eastern Europe last year. It’s one month longer than the two months I spent with my friend Georgia in Asia to begin my big adventure last April.

And it’s the exact amount of time I’ve been back in Australia, as of today. We’re still a week away from the day I returned to Adelaide and my “real life”, but nonetheless, today feels auspicious.

A lot has happened in the last three months, although in many ways, it seems as though nothing has happened. In any given three months out of last year, I traveled to countless ancient sites, learned phrases in any number of different languages, met a thousand people, some of whom I would Facebook friend, and worried constantly about missing my next bus/plane/train/taxi, and getting robbed or losing my passport/wallet/camera/laptop.

In many ways the last three months have been incredibly relaxing compared to life on the road. I know by the end of the ten months, it was wearing on me. I wasn’t feeling healthy, I was a little stressed, and I started to forget, lose, or misplace things. I needed a break.

Yet the coming home was incredibly stressful too, in its own way. I didn’t particularly want to come home; as much as I love Australia, my heart just isn’t here right now. I want to travel, meet people, eat exotic food, and learn other languages. I’m not sure if that will ever go away, and it’s certainly not gone anywhere at the moment.

Then there was the stress of figuring out where I fitted into life back here. Not knowing if I will be going away again in the foreseeable future meant that I needed to make an honest go of living my life here again, for the time being.

But it was hard.

I knew it would be, which was partly why I dreaded the homecoming. My “reverse entry culture shock” as it’s sometimes referred to, after my first overseas trip to Africa in 2009, was one of the worst periods of depression I’ve ever experienced.

It was a period where no one could help me because I couldn’t help myself. I was in a place I’d always liked living in, but my world had been turned upside down. I missed my new friends, my old friends didn’t understand me, and I felt helpless to deal with all the feelings I was having. I eventually got over that period, and have tried to incorporate the positive lessons I learned from my Kenyan experience in life ever since.

I’m not sure if I’ve always succeeded, but remembering those few months made me so aware of how things could turn out when I came home this time.

It has been tough, but I think I’m through the worst of it. I’ve got a job, I’m basically eating my parents out of house and home (and loving eating my way through Adelaide), and I’ve got some good things happening in regards to writing. I have spent loads of time with people who a year ago, I would never have predicted I would, and I have spent almost no time with the people I would have sworn I’d be inseparable from. I’ve felt loved, missed, hurt, neglected, misunderstood, and appreciated. Sometimes all at once!

To everyone who’s made the effort, you can’t ever know how much it means to me. I know I make the choice to leave and I don’t  expect life to simply stand still. But I’m so appreciative of those who understand why I need to do the things and go to the places that I do, and welcome me home with open arms.

To everyone who has continued or started to read here even though I am no longer traveling, it really means a lot that people are enjoying hearing what I have to say.

I hope to continue bringing stories of exciting and exotic food, places and people from all over the world for a long time.

Has anyone else experienced a tough time when coming home from overseas? Or found it easier than they expected?

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