Ghosts

I've been on the move all year. It started off with a month of adventuring in Thailand, followed by back to school with excursions all over the world, festivals, family visits, emergency bureaucratic visits, this home, that home, back home home, another home, a new home, there's no place like home, another trip, another field excursion, and back home and out again and over and repeat.

I'm tired. Burnt out. It's been a long-ass year. Too much has happened in 2017. Much more than I could manage. So I kind of broke down. I managed to finish the semester with what little grace I could muster up. I passed all my classes, did all my duties, finished my chores. I said a final good bye to loved ones, watched my garden wither and die to the frost, and held on dearly, in constant fear of losing a hold of life. I couldn't watch as trains came rushing into the station, closed my eyes when the blue lights came sirening around the corner. And when the fear peaked and my heart was filled to the brim with pain and worry and my eyes were permanently leaking, I decided that I needed to leave for a while. I packed my bags and flew home. Home to Hawaii. Because sunshine helps and darkness doesn't. So now I'm here, on vacation. Trying to process this hell of a year and find some balance again. 

Flying across the world to a tropical vacation island to run away from ones fears, anxieties and stress sounds like a great idea.... given that this tropical vacation island is not also a source of a lot of fear, pain and anxiety. I always manage to forget just how big that source was. So now I'm here in the tropics, trying to calm down, regain my strength and energy, find my positive spark, lighten up, be happy... but all around me I see the pain of my past. I can't get away from it and it's starting to hurt again. This place was hell. Everywhere I look I see the bad memories of my childhood, my adolescence, my young adulthood. They are etched along roads, painted upon the faces of businesses, dangling from familiar trees, hiding in the cracks of sidewalks I ran many a mile upon, always running, running, running to get away from them. The same sidewalks. The same exact cracks. The same pain as before. Why doesn't it ever disappear? Why does the past have to dominate here? All week I have been hanging out with my ghosts and they are starting to keep me awake at night. No! That's not why I came here! I didn't intend to deal with ghosts of my past! The point was to deal with the ghosts of 2017, not the ghosts of 2004-2013.