Who is that girl I see? Staring straight back at me
Why is my reflection someone I don’t know?
I almost feel as if I owe everyone in my “normal” life an apology. I’m not really myself. I know I’m not. I can feel it. I’m extremely jumpy and edgy and I get angry for the littlest reason.
Apparently it’s going to take a lot longer to recover from…whatever this was…than I thought.
I wish I could explain it. I wish I could explain why I’m so jumpy, so outright paraniod (and for those of you who know me off page, I mean more than usual), why…any of it. But I can’t. I thought that when we got home, everything would just shift smoothly back into place; that I would step back into my “home” skin just like always… but it turns out it doesn’t work like that.
For one thing, I haven’t worked full time retail since I was in my early twenties. Yes, when we’re out on contract I work 7 days a week technically, but the hours for my position are consistently more spread out and are overall much lighter. I don’t work 8 hours a day, and I’m far from on my feet all the time. So shifting back into a ‘standard’ 9 to 5, when I usually just jump on a few days a week? Has been a shock to my system physically to say the least. But it’s not so much that – time will adjust me to the physical – it’s the mental.
People…seem to frighten me a lot more than they used to. It’s as though I’ve actively forgotten how to be around a group of just plain old normal people. I don’t know how to handle them, sometimes I don’t even know how to talk to them. There are moments when I simply cannot speak, I just stand there and stare at nothing for what feels like 10 minutes at a time. And I don’t know where that’s coming from really. I feel…distant from everything and everyone. And I keep trying to move forward from it, but it’s as though some kind of sticky stretchy bubblegum is still holding me back.
Also, my filter seems to be completely broken.
And still, people keep asking if we’re going to go back. For those of you wondering that question – and it’s a legitimate question, and we know that everyone’s heart is in the right place: it’s too early to say.
The best I can give you is this: we’re trying. We’re really truly trying.
I wish I could make it go faster. I wish I could wake up tomorrow and just…be fine. Part of me can’t help thinking that this is utterly ridiculous there is no reason at all for me to be reacting like this. But it also seems to be something I can’t quite control.
So if I say something foolish, or I make a decision or have a reaction that seems completely opposite to me? Bear with me…please.