Returning to a Ghost Life

I'm back in Utah. I was away for over a month. Everything is as I left it. My roommate fed my fish, wiped the glass on the tank, and refilled the water, which was a big help. The condo is in decent order. So everything's good and well (barring that amazing loaf of bread which, after a month, resembled a mossy knoll full of cotton balls). But something's...off.

As I opened my bedroom door and unloaded my bags, I felt something strange. To some degree, I felt like I had returned to a shell, a sort of alternate life I had left behind and wasn't sure I could fully return to. The only time I've experienced something like that was returning from my mission, though that, of course, was a much bigger feeling full of other nuance. But still, I looked around my room, and I recognized it as home, and I was relieved to see my bed and my own bathroom and to know this was my space, but it felt somehow empty, lifeless, or...distant. It was home, but I wasn't sure I wanted it to be home anymore.

I went about unpacking, opening the mail which had accumulated in a large pile over the last month, stacking all of the bills yet unpaid, car registration to be renewed, and other odds and ends. With the organizing and cleaning needing to be done, along with the job searching I can finally focus on (maybe?), it was a little overwhelming, but I was also glad to have plenty to keep me busy.

I set up my laptop in its usual place on my mini desk, hooked up the big monitor, and put a movie in, and to my surprise, I found myself fighting faint feelings triggered by shadows of bittersweet memories associated with watching movies on this monitor in this room (sweet because of what it was at the time, bitter because the sweetness is only a memory). These objects which had seemed somehow hollow or dead--the monitor, the desk, the bed--were now coming alive again with hazy memories which stirred such mixed feelings in me that the various objects in my room seemed more like old acquaintances I wasn't in the mood to see than friends I'd missed while I was away. I've had a great month. I've spent a lot of time with friends and family, reconnected with old friends, rekindled pleasant memories, refreshed valuable perspective, and had a lot of fun. I've moved on from the sorrow and emotional fragility I was feeling when I left. It actually didn't take long to really start moving on, either. But the last time I was in this room, I had not yet moved on, and when I returned, the residue of that emotional state seemed to permeate the room. I resisted the brief urge to turn the movie off to stop the memories, but I opted instead to ride it out. It only took a minute or two to move past the sort of bitter nostalgia, but I sat there musing that it had even occurred, like when you burp and spit up just a bit in the back of your mouth but not enough to really phase you; just enough to be surprised and to make you a bit cautious about the next burp. Heh, yeah, that's about what it was like.

So anyway, here I am, back "home" in Utah, feeling like I left "home" to come here, and feeling an impulse to pack it all up, store or sell most of it, load up what I can in my car, and drive right back to Seattle or wherever is next on my nomadic journey.

But I figure I should probably sleep on it first. Aaahhh, my bed. Not a couch. Not a hide-a-bed. But MY bed. I think I'm going to sleep in.