Here is a raw, unedited entry from one of my travel journals. My 43 countries worth of exploring is stored in worn leather bound journals and I peruse them once in a while. I found this entry and it struck me as interesting. It’s mostly about memories, feelings and nostalgia. I did a lot of reflecting that year on that sort of thing, especially meeting people across Africa who were significant to my life for a beautiful moment, but I knew would end up being Facebook friends I rarely speak to. This is interesting also in the context of my illness. One of the characteristics of Borderline Personality Disorder is that upon feeling an intense emotion, we need a longer cool down period to return to baseline than a healthy brain. We feel things more intensely and longer, and that combined with my academic propensity for analyzing and philosophizing, it makes the workings of my mind perhaps a little much, but it’s the truth of what I was feeling at the time.
June 12th 2009 – Zanzibar, Tanzania
The colour I dyed my hair. Crisp fallen leaves beneath my leather boots on a long walk home. But more how I felt because of the colour I dyed my hair. Driving alone in the rain. Being alone on a plane full of people. The cold ocean below a sky of a million stars. Anticipation, quiet desperation, hope, confusion and a feeling that I can’t find words for. A choice, a decision. Being away for so long puts everything in front of me, bursting out of my heart, pouring out of my eyes, rushing through my brain. It cannot hide in routine, cannot be shared in friendship, it demands direct attention. And I oblige to the best of my ability. There are feelings from the past, and they are being confronted by new, unforgiving ones.
Yet I cling to them desperately as they were before. Each is a moment. One my subconscious feels is important to keep as it was. Sometimes songs being back these moments, so sharply. Are they important? To remember? To learn from? Who knows. I just feel with each song. I don’t know if that’s the point, to understand the importance. Each is a moment passed, a different life, but with a part I still carry with me. People I’ve wanted to be, feelings that make me believe I’ve gotten a step closer. That’s the dream isn’t it? These people you want to be, and the person that you are. There must be an answer somewhere.
I don’t know why these moments hold on to me so strongly. People who made these moments sometimes unknowingly. People who made them without my knowing. In my head, interlacing with the new ones, these feelings, each one in a bubble. They interpret new ones. Or are interpreted by them. I don’t think it’s up to me when I sort it out. All I know is these moments bring together the people I’ve been before and the people I’ve been years from now. I just have to keep feeling instead of trying to see.