Two Hearts

The words form in my throat but they stick. Unsure of the sound or the shape they need to take, or how they need to be expressed. I feel like I am being pushed, pulled, twisted and turned in every direction.  Maybe it is the full moon, maybe the changeable weather, or maybe, just maybe I am in transition – yet again. This is different this time, this time the pack is being packed with a set of new feelings and emotions. Ones that are ill fitting, that are foreign, that have not really surfaced in the last 18 months. They have been bubbling away under the surface and out of confusion or fear or inability to simply deal with them, I ignore them, I stuff them back down, I suppress them. What else is there to do? Dealing with them is complicated and hard and oh so not fun. So lets stick with suppression or denial for now, much easier, much safer and much nicer all round. Or maybe not. And so I write, as maybe I can find that the words on the page will some how bring light to unfamiliar terrain I am now on, the uncertainty of the future, the feeling of heaviness I feel in my chest.  

Rationally I know this part of my trip would come to an end, that I would have to say good bye – again – to people so incredibly special to me, but yet, like life and death and everything that is so blatantly obvious in this world, I have chosen not to acknowledge that I am leaving. Everything is changing, all of the time, so why is it such a suprise when it does? Even with the knowing that I will be back, and soon, it still does not change the feeling of weirdness (I can’t find a better word, sorry) that I have this week.

The view I never tire of....

I am beginning the journey “home” but I feel like I am leaving “home”. Is it possible to be confused by the sense of home, the feeling of security, the comfort and ease and complete knowing of a place, how can it be that I have that same sense of familiarity for two places in the world? It is confusing and exciting, it is achingly sad and grin from ear to ear joyful, it is so many things in one I don’t even know where to begin. I leave India after 6 months. It has disappeared before my very eyes. I have been in McLeod Ganj for most of that time and I guess after so much time in one place you do start to get attached. Attached to my favourite coffee shop, to the boys at Cafe Budan who are like my family, to the gorgeous girls who we share are ups and downs, to the kora and the elderly Tibetans that walk that trusted path every day, the dogs at the coffee shop that are like our pets, the snow on the mountains that every day takes my breath away - familiarity, connections, comfort and ease. They are all the things that make this place feel like home. A small community that still makes me smile every time I leave my front door, I am never bored or tire of it, in fact it is the opposite. The longer I am here, the more I am a part of the community and the community is more a part of me. 

One heart is not enough

So it is confusing as I long for home in Australia, I long to see my beautiful family and cuddle my gorgeous little nephew, I can not wait to see the open plains of the Wimmera and catch a glimpse of the blue of the Grampians, to drive over Sydney harbour bridge, to go to a yoga class followed by yum dinner in Surrey Hills with the yoga girls, to catch up with the crew in Horsham and Melbourne and see how the kids have grown, to have a glass of red with my Dad and talk for hours with my Mum, to have a beer and laugh with Chandler and to go back to the blue box and see my IKEA “family” - so do not get me wrong, the feelings I have for this part of the world are only matched by the feelings I have for home. But it is weird and wonderful and also confusing. I am settling with leaving the confusion aside, there is no right or wrong or one or other, there is both. And how incredibly lucky and blessed am I to have two places that stir that feeling of connection, of unexplainable okness and safety, of comfort and of ease.  So I guess as the old saying goes, home really is where the heart is, but I have decided I just need two hearts :)