Packaging

I wrote these paragraphs at the bottom of my "More Things" post, but I think they fit better as their own post....

To tell the truth, I'm a little nervous about my trip home. I mean, it's going to be amazing and wonderful and incredible and exactly what I need, but I remember feeling weird last Christmas when I came back after only five months. I felt homesick for Asia, and I felt like I had been gone for such a long time. And while this year I feel as though I'm one of those crazy Everest climbers who somehow manages to summit sans toes and weighing about 95 exhausted pounds as I finish the climb of this year, I also know that what used to be familiar is going to be completely unfamiliar. And even though I have moments of extreme and consuming loneliness here, I've gotten used to it all the same, and it may be a bit of a shock and adjustment having lots and lots of people around me. It's like presenting a starving person with an all-you-can-eat buffet. In those situations people will literally eat themselves to death. And, um, I know I'm not going to DIE from being home and surrounded by loved ones (quite the opposite!). But I think it will be an adjustment. And in that time I will also have to get used to the idea of living back in the U.S. again. Things do get hard here, I get tired of eating dinner by myself every night, and I feel like I can't appreciate my incredible surroundings because of my various physical laments, but it's still home. And even through my situationally-induced mixed feelings I've puzzled out a deep and devoted love for this place.

I'm not the same Brooke I was when I got on the plane to return to Thailand in the early, frost-covered, sparkling days of January, 2008. And, sure, a lot of these lessons did not come in the beautiful, exotic packaging that I had hoped they would. But they came, nonetheless.