Coming home: The sadness and the starting afresh



David Whitley looks at the worst part of any RTW trip – coming home and dealing with what has changed while you’ve been away
I don’t cry often. I’m your typical emotionally repressed male on that front. But when I left Australia in 2006, I cried. I went out for a year, like many people do, and ended up getting a job over there. By the time I was ready for the plane home, I’d been living in Australia for just under five years. It had become my home, and I was abandoning it to start life afresh. And it turns out that a new chapter – a new life – did begin. But as I waited for the taxi to take me to Sydney airport, I burst into tears. It felt like I was going back to the life I’d left behind. A giant step backwards.

When you’ve been away for a long time, going home is hard. Not working down a mine and getting lungs full of asbestos hard, but dealing with the emotions hard. The realisation hits that it was effectively all just a dream.

I struggled in the first few weeks back. I hated it. It was the life I’d left behind. People had moved on, but not much. Everything felt the same as it was before I left. I’d changed, but nothing else had. It felt like walking into an old still photograph and wondering why nothing was moving.

There’s an awful lot of guff written about finding yourself while travelling, and I don’t want to stray into that territory. But most people will find that travel changes them in some way; increased confidence, thirst to know more, realisation that the way you were brought up to do things isn’t the only way – things like that. And it can be very difficult to slot back into the roles you ditched to go travelling.

After a few weeks, however (and noticeably, after moving back out of my parents’ house), I began to feel better about things. I was pining for Australia less. I was starting to enjoy the rhythms of being back.

The key thing was that they weren’t the same rhythms I left behind. Some were similar, but I was making new friends – many through people I’d met in Australia – doing things differently and starting to enjoy a much stronger sense of purpose. I was in the same place, but it wasn’t the same life.

I suspect I’m not alone in this. Tastes, attitudes and ambitions change while you’re away for a long time. Slotting straight back in to where you left off is neither possible nor desirable for most of us. And for the crestfallen approaching the journey’s end, about to board that plane, I’d offer one snippet of solace. Yes, it is the end of the world. But it’s also the start of a new one.

How did you feel when you returned from travelling? Did life change after you got back? Share your thought by leaving a comment below.



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Comments  

 
# Stuart McD 2012-02-15 11:14
Agree.

And the longer you stay away the harder it becomes. Upon my return from my first solo trip away (2 years RTW) I had a friend back in Sydney in the pub sum it up by saying "it was just like you've been to the crapper and come back" He obviously meant it as a compliment, but for me, as you suggest, the trip had forever changed me,  through death and simply life changing experiences I wouldn't have had had I stayed at home. The comment shattered me and spurned me to get back out of Oz as soon as I could.

Friends in Asia who have moved back to oz after 10 year stints have found it incredibly hard - they'd send me emails that I'd show to dearly beloved and say "See, we can never go back!"

But one day we will, and while I know it will be brutal, it does improve... A little :)
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# Stuart Lodge 2012-02-15 11:27
Tis hard coming back. Did almost 2 years in Spain teaching and re-entry was difficult. Especially if you're skint. Saying that,the pain (and a little bit of joy) of being back, and the realisation that college/travelling easy(ish) street is behind you, can focus the mind and give that sense of purpose that may have been AWOL. If only to get out of your folk's house ASAP.
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# reina 2012-02-15 11:41
The choices you make after you get back are the important ones. What are you going to buy into now?
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# Narina Exelby 2012-02-15 19:37
I feel like a stranger every time I visit my parents, who still live in the town I grew up in. It's almost half my life since I moved away - and nothing's changed. But at the same time, everything has. It took me a while to realise the biggest change was my perspective: because what had once been my entire world had simply become a tiny point on a very large map.
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# jules 2012-02-16 01:21
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and emotions with everyone. It is admirable. If I may be so blunt, but lovingly of course.... I observed the similar theme here....traveling as a way to escape "reality". If that is your objective when you decide to travel abroad, then you will come back very disappointed. Like peace, mental afflictions also follow you around but it is up to you to decide what you want to cultivate, peace, that's already your inherent nature, or the destructive emotions we feel about things around us. Everything we see is an illusion, as you've pointed out. Of course things change, people change, look at them closely. Nothing is permanent and the only thing that is ever consistent is change. Choose to change your perspective and as some of you pointed out, traveling helped you see things from a different perspective. Like Narina Exelby said, "nothing's changed. But at the same time, everything has. It took me a while to realise the biggest change was my perspective". What did you want change? Everything is the way it is but once you put a personal preference on it, a preference as to how things should look "to you", then you will be sadly disappointed. When you're uncomfortable with the opposition, the opposition becomes comfortable; but when you are comfortable with the opposition, it has no choice but to transform. Like the 1st law of thermal dynamics states, energy can't be changed nor destroyed, it can only be transformed....
Good luck, friends!
I too want to travel for a yr, but it's not b/c I want to escape my life...
Find what you love to do, and do it where you are. The problem is that you are not happy with where you are, so you left, but then you had to come back to where you were, where you weren't happy to begin with, so you're still in the same place. Change is from within...not with-out.
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# Lola 2012-04-15 15:31
Jules, You wrote that so well.
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# kelia 2012-02-16 08:08
l left Australia two weeks ago and l'm still traveling, but l already know that as soon as l get to the U.k. I will be making plans to emigrate. I was only there 10 weeks, but l felt l belonged there. Travel has been the catalyst to change my life and me forever. The best experience of my 43 year life. Awesome.
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