The Scream (Belize- this time at least)

It happened early this trip. It happens to me every trip, but I suppose with this really being the final one, it makes sense that it came early. I remember the first time it happened I was in Thailand. I was in the most disgusting hotel you could imagine and I woke up in this nasty bed and looked at the cracked ceiling. Before I knew it, my friend was shaking me awake, completely freaked out, he said that I had sat bolt-upright in my bed and was screaming at the top of my lungs.

The scream. Coming back from long-term travel is possibly one of the most mind boggling things one can ever experience. People that haven’t done it completely could never begin to understand, but anyone who has knows 100% what I am talking about.

It is incredibly strange to have come back from a trip to such a foreign location, to have changed and feel so different than you felt when you left and then to walk back through the gate that you have walked through thousands of times in your life when you get home. It is completely surreal because you feel like nothing will ever be the same again, I don’t know what you expect, but not that it will feel exactly the same as it did before you left. It is puzzling and trying to fit long term travel back into a life at home is almost impossible. I think after something as extreme as some of the things I saw and experienced in Africa especially, it is even harder to fit in.

But you do it somehow. It is great to see people, but strange to have a refrigerator that you can open anytime. I find myself unable to wear anything other than the same 3 shirts I wore my entire trip. I go to the grocery store and usually have a freak-out moment because of the excess of choice. That happens in several realms of life. I wander vacantly around the house, unable to concentrate in this in-between stage that I am not really sure who I am or where I am. Everything feels so familiar but so different.

There are the sleepless nights where all I can do is go outside and look at the stars and try to transport myself back to a balmy tropical night, I can almost feel the warm humid air on my skin and feel like I should panic when I can’t see the Southern Cross, but refuse to give in and keep looking as if it will magically appear in the sky and I won’t feel so lost anymore.

Then the restlessness kicks in. Not changing locations every couple of days feels suffocating. Relationships are different. You don’t spill your deepest secrets, talk about religion and philosophy and the most disgusting of bodily functions within moments of meeting someone. You don’t meet someone on a bus and move on to your next location with the understanding that, “Hi, you are going to be my best friend for the next bit of time and we are going to be closer than we are with almost anyone back at home no matter how many years we have known them. We will completely depend on and trust each other. We are going to spend the next bit of time probably sharing a bed and together almost 24 hours a day, and be eating off each other’s plates and sharing everything.” So there is a new way of adjusting to normal social relationships again.

It’s funny too, most of this trip hasn’t been your typical hostel trip for me, it has been more away from other backpackers and more work-oriented, and it isn’t a fun, but it is definitely interesting and a different experience, but the end of my trip here in Belize is about as classic backpacker as you can get so it brings back all that nostalgia from previous trips like South East Asia that was like this.

So back to the scream. I woke up this morning and was sort of thinking about life as I watched the sunlight come in through the strange ceiling, and it is this very familiar emotion that came that I have had several times now and I can't explain it very well. It is sort of like my whole life flashing through my eyes in the travel world and I know it only takes a second but it feels like eternity.

All the feelings of these images of waking up alone in a strange hotel room, waking up not sure what country I am in, moments with friends where I know I will never be as close to anyone as I am to this person right now and I also know I will probably never see this person again, moments of lifetimes and expedited relationships, and this clink of home and waking up under the same ceiling, seeing the same people, flights home from previous trips and all the emotions swirling there.

And the next thing I knew I was screaming at the top of my lungs (just like i have done at the end of every trip, it is this BIZARRE reaction I have no control of) until the 2 guys in my room jumped out of their bunk beds and start shaking me to bust me out of this trance and more people have stuck their heads in the door to see what the noise is. Then it was all I could do to just not cry because if I started crying, sometimes I think I wouldn't ever stop. How can this all be ending? How can so much have already ended?