visiting my family overseas, ii
I am visiting my family, which, as usual, springs a maelstrom of indecipherable emotions. There's something about returning to your childhood home after a while, with all it's cluttered memories and half-healed wounds. At moments, I feel myself fusing with the angry fifteen-year-old I used to be.
It's strange how easily buried feelings resurface in familiar spaces, how subtly. A glance, a shift in tone, a recurrent argument in a new disguise, and suddenly I am no longer the version of myself I fought so hard to become. Just a kid again - raw and burning with an anger I thought I outgrew.
I once read that you have only truly healed when, being in an environment that once triggered you, no longer does. I am halfway there, I think. Some things don't pierce as deeply anymore. I have more tools now: boundaries, healthier coping mechanisms, space between feeling and response. But it's a lot of homework, and some days, it feels like cramming for an exam I never signed up for.
Still, not everything about being here has been hard. Each time I return, it feels a little lighter. This time, I got to reconnect with friends I dearly love - people who are unapologetically themselves, who don't shrink to fit the room. With them, I don't need to perform. I could just be. We met for board games and dinner the other night, and I got the chance to make new friends.
Moments like those propel an unprecedented desire to overwrite the old memories, with warmer, more gentle ones. I want to rewrite the emotional narrative of this place, one rooted not in anger and survival, but in connection, safety, warmth.
Anyway, I took a good few days off (from writing, job applications, structure) though I ended up falling off the productivity bandwagon pretty hard. Normally, I cling to structure, but here time blurs. I look forward to get back to writing as there's a lot on my mind. So much I need to understand through the act of putting it down.