18.05.2020

I touched down five months ago today. this means I’ve been home for longer than I was away on my adventure. the time home has been strange. I can’t say that nothing has changed, as we’re currently drifting through unprecedented times in light of the pandemic that’s pulled the rug from under the world. but this period of five months, despite physically tying me to my island home, has been anything but stable in my mind. drifting in thoughts and dreams that take up so much of my time. processing the past and the people and wishes and simple things I’m left missing. trying to keep it all alive with an awareness of the fact that the time has passed and I’m living in its aftermath. where do we go from here? maps don’t exist for such questions. I miss and I miss and I wish my days away. << x

five months

five months to the day since I said goodbye to Lewes and the home and family that was. not a day passed without me longing for that time again, in that place with those people. I count myself truly lucky, but struggle with the reality that that former life stays there, in those dorm rooms and cobblestone streets, walks to Tesco and pints ofOld Rosie, in that crappy kitchen and those hugs in the past. I miss and I miss and I miss.

‘to be alive is to be missing.’ << x

a lot of time

I’ve been home for pretty much the same amount of time that I was away. I find this difficult to get my head around. some mornings I wake up from dreams in which I’m living and breathing my time in Lewes. other days it feels as though the whole experience could have just been a dream orsomething I imagined on a rainy day.

we’re all in lockdown as the world has frozen and it gives me a lot of time to think. instead of finding clarity and coming to terms with reality I find this excess of time as only weaving myself deeper webs of thought and nostalgia for a time and place we all knew was limited, and has long since expired.

I miss the people and the place and the life over there. I long for it all, and so much of my time is spent wishing I’d wake up in that crumby room for another day in the rain, study in Carafe or the kitchen, a stop by Lansdown, and tea time with the flimsy family that was in room 53. ‘to be alive is to be missing’. << x