11 September 2018
London Heathrow Terminal 3
20:13
Travel Diary
i left like I had arrived.
harried
and
panicked.
going through motions,
its hard not to feel like leaving
is fragmenting
as though losing
bits of yourself.
but arrival is no better,
all you’ve got are the pieces of you
that survived.
i am sitting in heathrow, terminal three. and while i dreamt and reminisced about home for the past year. today, is one of those tenebrous days, where i am struggling to be anything but the motions of routine airport searches, unpacking and repacking my overweight luggage and waiting impatiently for the flight, while not really looking forward to the destination.
this travel experience has plagued the last four places i have travelled to: london, hastings, nairobi, new york and now cape town. this failing to feel true nostalgia or excitement. i really wish that i could participate in the revelry of documenting my lasts on instagram, by collecting memorabilia, by expressing any emotion. but again, my emotions range from numb to panic and nothing in between. and like every trip, I spent the day preceding it, sleeping for over 12 hours. only waking up to bouts of panic and sometimes being woken up by the weird nightmares.
the numbness is not unfamiliar to me, depression is and has been a constant. but i often wonder, about this travel lethargy in particular. is the numbness, my way of expressing my sadness at departure. is the numbness a way to calm my social anxiety, for awkward airport meetings and reunions? perhaps it is my way to lower expectations of the destination ahead? i hate disappointment. has it become my weird coping mechanism. that instead of coping leaves me more broken than ever?
i have no answers. all I want is to be able to feel anything, anything but the lethargy
featured image: Adrian Mcdonald (Instagram: @lexonart)
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