They think its all over …. it is now!

Reality doesn’t take long to kick in.  It is just over 4 weeks since we arrived back in Ireland.  Standing the departures area, waiting for our bags, I was not sure what to feel: Excitement at seeing my family and friends after so long, Sorrow that the whole adventure was over, Nervous about whether or not I would settle back into the normality of life at home.

Now, almost a month back at home I’m still not sure how to feel.  I’m happy to finally have the routine I was beginning to crave towards the end of the trip.  I’m delighted to be home with my family and friends who I missed more than I would ever have expected to.  Naturally I suppose, there is still a part of me that wishes I was packing up my rucksack in the morning (even though that was the one thing I could not wait to stop doing) and heading off on another adventure. 

A friend told me before I left on this trip that it would change me – in some way, not necessarily in a fundamental way, but it would change me, change my outlook on life, what I viewed as priorities.  I have to admit I did scoff a little at the idea.  I figured at 28 years of age, I was pretty much who I was going to be.  Sure, I expected the trip to bring new experiences and maybe open my eyes a little, but change me, no.  How wrong I was. 

And how has it changed me? 

I haven’t a clue.

I don’t know has it made more tolerant or less patient, more confident or more fearful, more open minded or has it reinforced the stereotypes we all hold.  I really, really don’t know.  What I do know though, is that while nothing has really changed, everything feels just a little bit different.

Speaking with friends over the last few weeks, I have come to realise that my biggest fear coming back from this trip was that I would lose that feeling, that completely unexplainable feeling that a trip like this has given me.  The sense that nothing is pre defined, that we are all master of out own destinies.  Over the past 9 months, with all my wandering, and all my pondering, I have realised that the only person who stops me from doing the things I want to do, achieving the things I want to achieve, is me.  And well, I know me, so in a battle, it should be no contest really!

Last week, someone asked me if I thought that the trip had quenched my thirst for travel.  My response was unequivocal. 

Not a chance.

If anything it  has fueled it.  The past eight months have shown me how much the world has to offer and how little of it I have seen or even know.  For now, the reality I used to know has had to kick in.  And while that will be my reality for the next while at least, that part of me that has bigger dreams, dreams of wild adventures in South America, of wilderness treks in Asia, of white knuckle, adrenalin pumping action in New Zealand knows that it won’t be forever.  Ok, so the 9 month trip may be a one off, but there is far too much colour and life out there for this to be the end for me, and sure its only two months till 2010 and I won’t have been away all that year …. surely I’ll be due a holiday!