I wasn’t going to write about this. It’s too personal I thought, too real. But coming back to reality is just as much a part of travel as the amazing adventures abroad, and I know many people who, like me, find it hard to readjust.
The truth is: coming back is hard. It’s hard because everything is the same, but you aren’t. It’s hard because you want to share your experiences, want to relive them by gushing about them to the friends you left behind, but they cannot relate. It’s hard because, believe it or not, life went on without you while you were away. People had their own excitement and joy, heartache and experience. And you missed out on that just as they missed out on you, and everything that happened between who you were and who you have become.
Coming back is hard because you miss the excitement. Because you crave the uncertainty of unfamiliar countries, and long for local cuisines that just aren’t the same in the West. Because you want to see the people you met along the way who you became so close with that you miss them like long lost friends, hoping that maybe they’ll understand that you are homesick for a place that was never truly your home.
Coming back is hard because when a place is laced with old memories it’s hard to find space to make new ones, and you don’t want to let go of all the ones you have just made. It’s hard because in the every day routine that you have returned to all of the wild & wonderful moments almost feel like a dream from another life, another version of yourself that you almost don’t recognise.
It’s hard to approach the familiar as you would the unknown, awkward to do alone here things that you would have been excited by there. It’s uncomfortable to conform to the comfortable.
But the return is just as much a part of the adventure as the journey itself. It may be hard, and it can get lonely at times, but it will never be so bad that the incredible experiences were not worth it. Embrace it; coming back may surprise you.
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