Back in the motherland

So we ran away... we ran away from water and no power and stress and potential illness and the general chaos of it all.  We got caught up in the hype of fleeing tourists and we booked urgent flights. We escaped to parental sanctuary... working internet, nice meals, hot water, sunshine and child care.   So we find ourselves suddenly and surprisingly in the motherland.  We had planned a brief one week trip home that would have been a whirl of socialising, but now have a three week span at home and while the little angel is enjoying the luxury of grandma on tap, I am instead spending my time feeling guilty about not being at work, and working as much as I can from here.  Of course I am seeing friends as well, but we haven't been away long enough to make that feel really special, more a pleasant surprise.
And I miss my home.. I miss our little home, our newly growing friendships, our little plants and the routines we were just settling in to.  I feel dislocated here - everything is very familiar and yet not comforting.  It doesn't feel like "home"... it feels like the place we used to live.
So I work ... I work on gathering donations to freight over to flood devastated families, I work on planning and supporting the teams who are doing the real work.... I feel connected when I am working...
The time is flying and yet it feels strangely bubble-like...
I feel like I am already slipping into what I now think of as my "developing country persona".  I like myself in developing countries.  I am different, I am more real, I care less about my appearance, my hair, what people think of me.  I care more about people, real experiences, personal and mental development, quality use of time, observing and listening rather than talking, experiencing rather than owning, and fighting for what I believe in rather than living numb.  I like myself more in this persona but it also makes me feel disconnected from other people, from my "home" culture.  This persona is more about aloneness, about going my own way, about living my path rather than sharing my journey.
I find myself feeling single for the first time in a very long time - with sadness and relief.  I tell myself that all I need to do is follow my path and everything will be ok - because this is how I truly feel... and I know that I am on my path for the first time in a long time - and it feels good.  Yet at the same time I am slightly concerned for myself as I trudge further into my 40th year of life - single, solo, alone.  Am I too focused on my own journey to allow myself to experience my own family, partnership, togetherness?  By taking this path am I sentencing myself to being a lonely spinster mother?  Will I start to live through and smother my child?  Will I be that interesting but eccentric old lady whose child has grown and gone out to live her own life and who now has lots of interesting stories but no-one to listen to them?  Will I regret these choices as an old lonely lady who had lots of love to give but never quite found a way to give it to a life lover?  Will I become bitter, uncompromising, set in my ways, impossible to be in a relationship with?  Will I continue to chose to live in places and ways that make relationships almost certainly not an option?
These are the questions that bubble under the surface as I sit the lounge room of this very pleasant "old home" of mine... I could have stayed here and chosen a much simpler easier life... and yet as I sit here now I know .... I am doing exactly what I need to be doing, and this is not where I need to be.
I have my fingers crossed that somehow my path takes me to a place where I can have the best of both worlds.

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