Portland 2019: Coming Home When Home Is Not Home (Or Is It?)

View from the St. Louis airport

After seven days of touring with Insomniac Folklore and six days in St. Louis trying (and sometimes failing) to spend time with everyone I wanted to see, I found myself on a plane heading home— but for the first time in my life, home after a trip was not St. Louis. 

I arrived at midnight (2am Central time, which I was thoroughly on by now), blinking in the lights of the Portland airport and thinking— catching myself over and over again— how the St. Louis airport was much nicer than I remembered. Zach came to pick me up and I felt like I had never left him, but also that I'd been gone forever, and also I'd been crying all day because it was my 30th birthday and I was so grateful for the past decade of my life and all the experiences I'd had and all the friends I'd made and holy cow I just wanted to sleep.

I was hungover from the trip for a solid week afterward. I was depressed. I kept forgetting which state I was in. I was homesick. I missed people. I missed touring. I missed cornfields and miserably hot weather. I felt like I was caught in the wrong reality. I cried a lot.

Slowly, very slowly, I began to remember the life we've carved out for ourselves here in Vancouver. I began to fall back into our patterns. We walked through the mossy fir forests in the damp but barely warm air, and I began to remember where I was. 

Zach and I are on the final leg of our time here: we have a little more than two months to try to do everything we came out here to do. I for one am hoping for a trip to the beach soon, but we'll see.

I've been home for a week and a half now, and I feel grounded again. It was just a much rougher transition than I expected.

~~~