Wanting Home

I guess this story will be told in pieces...

The semester had ended. I hadn't slept, but I finished my presentation, my paper, and had bound and printed. I slept through saying good-bye to my eight semester-mates... I'm not sure I would have known what to say either way. We were brought together by this program, but in any other typical environment, would we have been friends?

I headed towards Nicaragua on a 24 hour bus. 24 hours from Panama to Nicaragua. The entire time I became very aware of two things. 1.) I was alone. By this point I had been alone before in Panama... but always with some guidance here in there. I hadn't truly been alone navegating a foreign country since Japan. 2.) I just wanted to go home.

Yay, I was meeting up with Chelsea. Yay, we were going to explore Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. I just wanted to go home. I began to realize how fragile my mind was. A semester of completely foreign inundation without a true comfort zone, seven months of not having a home, not having the familiar.... I stopped thinking about finally finishing my journey because my eyes would well up at the thought.... I just wanted to go home.

That's all I'll put in this post, b/c that's all that's necessary for now. I tell people I began to recognize the limits of being human... or rather I better understood my own limits. And these limits aren't in the sense of "I don't want to do this anymore"... it was "I can't". It's an odd feeling where your subconscious desires begin to impress completely over your consciousness. Fighting against what you don't want wasn't an option. I finally had to admit to myself. I'm done. Let me go home.

It makes me wonder about soldiers. What level beyond my own over-dramatacized perceptions does a soldier reach when drafted into war for years? Granted, I'm imagining soldiers of the more historical wars where drafts were still instituted; but even today, at what point does the mind "break" and permanently change as a result to surviving an environment where your current brain process can no longer easily adapt within its comfortable flexibility? At what point does one begin to change?

For all still reading this blog, I send my gratitude. Writing and reflecting reveals and captures new ideas, new thoughts, and... the essence of experience that isn't attained just by "thinking back". I don't think I would have continued if not for the hope of a greater audience--that my words somehow could minutely affect (positively) the life of someone else. Thanks.

Tim Soo