Polished reminiscence

I wrote this right after I came back, but it took me three weeks to put it together, oh life...

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So we are home, today marks a week since we landed back on American soil, and I feel like I have never left. It feels like I haven’t been to Poland, or I have, but in a different life, in some altered dimension and for sure a thousand years ago. I would even say I was dreaming it, if it wasn’t for the fact that Simon’s polish really improved and he is still walking around building sentences and all, responding to me and such, or was is indeed magic!?

So yeah, that is how it usually feels, it seems like in the age of facetime and Dreamliners, that 6,000 miles is not really that big of a distance, the world is much smaller after all. But it does. I feel every mile of the distance and every hour of the time difference, each closing down the window of connection between the worlds. I think quite obviously the time and distance are the real reasons why it always feels like this, why it always feels like it didn’t happen, or happened in a different life, but it is just so surprising… every time it happens.

Yesterday, I miraculously stayed awake past nine o’clock, conquered my jet-lagged instincts to fall asleep standing, only to watch Silicon Valley (and I think everyone should watch it for that matter, it is pretty funny, and seemingly full of wisdom … ”sometimes, I imagine that my skeleton is me and my body is my house, that way I am always home”… absurd? Perhaps? Oddly funny too, because in my case it is also true...

Each time I go and come back, apart from the jet-lagged, I also suffer from what I would call - a sentient split. Something opens up in me again, something that before I had left felt nonexistent, almost healed up. It takes a dose of a mind bending, perceptual antibiotic to reverse it, to get back into balance, force everything back to the state of acceptable existence. It is like some kind of scarred tissue that I just wear, walk around it attached to my chest but don't feel it too often… unless someone points it out and asks "where are you from?" Then I realize it is still there, just like having a giant scar I guess... I feel like I am opening a wound over and over and over again, anytime it patches up, here we go again. So the scarred tissue is thin and shrill…

Hence this time, I have questioned the whole process, why am I doing this to myself, over and over again, should I give myself more time to heal, do I even allow myself to? Shouldn’t I just live here and now, left “there” and was finally “here”, got rid of all this nostalgia, and sentiments behind.

I guess what I mean is that it costs a lot and I don't even mean the airfare...

Then I look at my children, look at everything they are and I wonder if they will feel the same way at some point, will that also affect them? Do I want to inject them with that slit malady, uproot them just slightly so they feel like me, even if marginally, still out of the here and now? Won't they feel uncanny, will they recognize the ache? Will they wonder why and where is it coming from? If so, they will always feel half of something... and being half of something doesn’t mean it is worse, but generally when you are a half something, half from somewhere, doesn’t it make it harder for you to feel full, full at all times, without the ache?

And then I see Simon, speaking polish fluently only after two weeks of being there, I see Leo opening up to everyone, welcoming new faces with smiles and wonder of delight, seeing all these people that fill their lives, even if only for a little bit, and then I see it is good, even if they disappear shortly after… I repeat to myself that it is all worth it, it is worth the wound, the wound I keep re-digging, it is worth the split, it is even worth their slim uncomfortableness, their "so who am I really?" Because when we are torn just a little, we feel a little more too... I hope they will appreciate it one day and that it will make them happy that we did this to ourselves, because all the beautiful things in life tend to leave us with scars...