The final hours

I hate goodbyes.

I really, really do.  One of the main reasons that I’ve not interested in making any more ‘permanent’ moves to a new country any time soon is that I am just sick to death of doing the new guy shuffle.  Going through the initial pain of enforced solitude.  Slowly making new acquaintances, sharing my life’s highs and lows with them and becoming part of their world.  Finally gaining a small circle of close friends just in time to find myself standing in the departure terminal waving goodbye and knowing that even with the best will in the world our relationship will never be the same again.  Eventually, the heartache just becomes too much to volunteer for time and time again.  I’m completely sick to death of it.

And yet despite all of that … I’ve been saying my farewells yet again.  In a couple of days I’m going to be on a plane bound for Saigon.  All of my stuff is in storage and in a couple of hours I’ll be handing back the keys to my empty apartment.  I don’t have a job, I don’t have a return ticket and I don’t know when I’ll be back.  It could be September.  It could be November.  It could be Christmas.  I honestly haven’t a clue.  On Sunday night I’ll be having one last beer with good mates, giving my nephew a final cuddle and hoping that he learns how to use Skype soon, and heading for the airport once more.  I keep telling myself that this time it’s different – I’m not leaving for good.  I’m planning to come back to my adopted home of Melbourne and with any luck, even return to my current neighbourhood.  It’s only a few months.  My friends and family will all still be here, as will all of my stuff.  I won’t need to start from scratch again.  All of this is true.  So why am I still feeling the same sense of impending loss that I recognise from so many times in the past?

Hopefully it’s just the usual pre-trip jitters.  I’m pretty confident that once I’m on the road and focussing all of my attention on the present that is rather than the future that might be, these feelings will pass (or at least be suppressed sufficiently that I don’t feel them too much).  My expectation and hope is that the thrill of the new and unexpected will overwhelm the comfort of the familiar.  I know and understand the I’m not the only one whose life will be changing over the rest of 2010 – even for those not travelling things will not stand still.  Relationships may come and go, jobs may change, life will evolve in ways both expected and otherwise.  As I bus, fly or sail from place to place in search of … whatever it is that I’m looking for, I just hope that everybody else’s journey doesn’t take them so far along a different path that we lose sight of each other somewhere along the way.  I’m sure it won’t, but rational thought seems to be in somewhat short supply at the moment so of course the concern is still there.

As always in this situation though, I eventually end up shrugging my shoulders and saying ‘well screw it, worrying about it won’t change anything – so stop worrying’.  Sometimes (like now) that’s harder to do than at other times, but I’m pretty confident that some time in the next 59 hours I’ll manage it.

Until then, I’ll keep trying to teach a three year old how to use video conferencing software, I guess.

See you on the road…

What goes through your mind in the final hours before you embark on extended travel?  Fear?  Joy?  Excitement?  All of these or something else entirely?