paperthinwalls

So I am finally back home. Sitting in my bed and writing in my lil' ol' blog after about 20 hours on a flight. I love travel. I even love the middle parts of travel...especially the parts in airports, watching all the people coming and going. Making up storied about their lives in my head. But even this is not enough to make a 20 hour trip any less annoying. I am not trying to complain, not in the least...I happen to think I am pretty lucky to get to do what I do and travel as much as I do. If only more people felt the same way about their jobs.

There is one thing which is always weird about coming home. It is perpetually bittersweet. Like a melancholy happiness. I can't really put my finger on it. I am glad I am home, yet missing my friends whom I have just left. I am home in a place which should feel natural and comfortable, yet I feel strange, uneven, off-kilter. Some of it is the jet-lag to be sure, but there is more here than just time zone differential.

When I come home, I find myself debating where or not I want a friend to pick me up...part of me loves the idea of having a good friend meet me at the airport, having a good conversation, catching up on all of our other friends. The other part, the part which tends to win out more often than not, is a bit more solitary...I love the anonymity of hiring a car service. No chatting, no conversation, no catching up, no history, just a ride home. I love it. I can stare out the window the entire ride home or close my eyes and let the motion of the car rock me to sleep. Then, when I actually get home, I find myself in the middle of another inner debate: do I get together with friends or do I spend the day alone reorienting myself? As funny as this sounds, I find this is one of the rare moments when I miss being the most important person in someone's life. When I miss having someone else being the most important person in my life. It hits me all of a sudden that what I really want is to come home to a particular someone or to not come home to anyone at all. I miss those comfortable silences, the questions without any pressure of an answer, the understanding that physical proximity is enough to explain how we feel, the entangling of legs and feet and hands and hair and lips, the beautiful warmth from napping, the smile that crosses my lips when I see she is still in bed drooling on her pillow when I come back from the bathroom. This is home.

I don't mean to be morose and I am not writing this about anyone in particular...or maybe I am and I just haven't met her yet. Either way, these feelings always subside once I get back in the swing of things...but there is something eerily comforting in their melancholy. So for now, this melancholy is a welcome sensation of being home.