Waiting for the hit

I'm coming home.  It's real.  I'll be in the States, in my house, in 13 days.  It's sort of weird that after so long I've decided now is the time to write a blog post because I don't feel like I have anything to say...  There is so much rumbling deep deep inside of me and I'm constantly shaken by it but I can't locate it, can't break it open and see what is inside, can't peel back the layers and bring them to the light of my consciousness, embrace them, address them, and set them down outside of me.  Occasionally the thunder gets a little louder, a little closer to my conscious and I feel the pressure build behind my eyes but the tears don't come, as badly as I wish they would.  There is so much to feel and to process it has just rendered me stagnant with my hair standing on end, skin tingling, waiting for the storm to hit.

It's like that moment when you know you're about to get hit hard by something but it's too late to get out of the way.  Your stomach jumps into your throat, your face starts to cringe, and somewhere deep inside you think "shit, this is going to hurt, but here it comes."  I'm stuck in the expectation phase, just thinking about everything that is about to happen to me, everything that is about to come and I want the slam to just hit me, to bowl me over, so that I can lick my wounds and start trying to pick myself back up and move forward. I think the only reason that it hasn't come is there is a small irrational hope that I'm not going to get hit, that somehow I'll escape unscathed from this enormous upheaval and there's a denial that it's going to happen at all.

I keep trying to remind myself that this is just like leaving the States when I came to Peru for the first time but it's not.  I try to read journal entries and put myself back in that time and place, back in the shoes of that person, but after two years of frustration, loneliness, struggle, hope, and determination, my feet have grown too big or warped or calloused to fit in those shoes and I can try and squeeze but it's not the same fit.  I'm too different now.

It's just not the same.  I'm not going to the same place, I'm not the same person, I don't have the same expectations, the experience is going to be different.  Everything is different.  The only thing that is the same is that both transitions involved goodbyes with people I loved, a lot of time on airplanes, the use of a passport, and carting around a lot of crap.

I don't know where to start with how I feel.  Or how to address it because I'm numb with something explosive bubbling under the surface and every time I feel like I identify an emotion, there is a new one that pops up that is its opposite.  And it's all capped and contained by a sincere sense of denial.

I'm waiting for it to hit me, but the expectation is killing me.