Coming home for the holidays

I’m writing this today at the very last minute. As I’ve posted twice this week, I hope you’ll forgive me for being late today. In any case, I have a good reason for being late, because for the last couple of days I’ve barely had time to sit still. Aside from some hours spent on the train traveling to the different outer corners of my country to visit family members I haven’t seen in months, I have been trying to spend as much time as possible with everyone. That being said, I feel like I’m spending not nearly enough time on any of them.

After a rushed morning at my sister I arrived way too late at my mom’s only to leave way too early the next morning to arrive way too late at my dad’s and then also coming back at my sister’s too late again. It’s weird being back home. I’ve been looking forward to this for so long but now that I’m hear everything is flying by and nothing seems to be the way it’s supposed to be. Or, more accurately, the way I’d imagined it in my mind.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m loving being back at home and seeing my family again. I’m also still hugely excited about going to see my friends in a couple of days. However, I think it’s only fair to also acknowledge that things are a bit weird.

Somehow this place seems not enough like home and too much like home both at the same time. On the one hand I feel like I’m sinking right back in patterns from months ago as if all those months have disappeared into nothing. I feel like the old me in my old life and it’s weird and comforting at the same time.

On the other hand; those months have happened and it is impossible not to notice the effect. I have to notice how different I am and face how that’s going to affect the people I left behind when I return again. The thing is that things will be different because I am different and I will have to find my place here a little bit over again.

I’m aware that I’m describing this all wrong but I think the point is that coming home is a bit of a shock and it’s just a sneak peak of what it will be like next month when I return semi-permanently. Maybe things will go back to what they were before I left, or maybe everything will have changed and nothing will ever be like it was again. For now, I will enjoy myself as much as I can while I rush around trying to give everyone a fair share of my time while I’m standing with one leg in the Netherlands, with the other with my friends in Paris and with my head and heart in the UK.