I Woke Up This Way
An Uninvited Mid-Life Awakening (Part 1)
I can tell you the precise moment it began. But I can’t begin to say why.
Flight EK235, Emirates airline. I splurged for the first class upgraded seat for the 16-hour journey between Dubai and Chicago. One of three flights I needed to get home from Nepal. A 44-hour journey in total.
Staring at the built in TV screen, yet unable to select a movie. Staring at my computer screen, yet unable to write. Reclining the seat to its bed-like position, yet unable to sleep. Something was stirring, deep in my gut, yet the feeling was so foreign, I could nary describe it.
It began slowly. Like the frog who could easily jump out of a pot of boiling water but cannot feel the temperature change of the initially tepid water as it rises to boiling.
Four days earlier, I was trekking through the jungles of southern Nepal. We stopped for lunch at the base of a bridge strung over a rushing river. I was covered in leaches. There was something symbolic about being feasted on by these small but mighty creatures. Watching the blood trickle from my skin long after they were pulled away. Days until it ceased, weeks until it healed. As in life, the impact of those who we allow to attach to us is felt far longer than their actual attachment.
Yet, as I picked them off one by one, while listening to the deafening sounds of the cicadas, I was not thinking of other’s attachment to me. Rather, lost in my own head, I was immersed in my attachment to myself. Feeling the dark cloud of confusion and self-doubt roll slowly over the hills of my soul.
How did I get here? Not simply the geographic here but the emotional here. Is my dharma really to be out alone in the world on a solo mission of impact? Does anything I am doing really matter? Sure, the women I work with feel seen. And maybe that is enough. Maybe the je ne sais quoi of a westerner who is open and demure, only there to listen and learn is a way to spark inspiration in women who feel repressed and unseen. Or is it? I might never know.
In some ways irrelevant, as this was not the foundation of my unease.
After lunch, we began trekking again. I got to the center of the bridge and stopped. I looked back at where we had come from and ahead at the hours of hard trekking ahead. And my thoughts turned to another question, is this what I really want? There was a lump in my throat and a boulder in my stomach. If not this, then what? My entire personal brand, business, passions, lifestyle is forged in service and travel. If not this, who am I?
This question ringing in my ears, I pushed it down. A future Mel quandary to contemplate.
Fast forward to the airplane ride and time to reconcile with this future Mel dilemma. As I lay there sleepless, I began to acknowledge what I perhaps had known since Chandibhanjyang but did not want to admit, I was homesick.
Homesick, a feeling I had no frame of reference for. No concept of understanding. I have mourned the ending of every adventure I have ever taken since I was a child traveling the country in an RV. Every trip set ablaze my soul only to be dampened by the mundane grey clouds of everyday life. Homesick has never existed.
And the irony of this emotion at this particular moment…there was no longer a home to return to. Neither marriage nor career nor physical house awaited my return. I was homesick, not for the life in the rearview, but for a life that was yet to begin.
Once home, to the tiny four walls I now call home, another foreign feeling washed over me. Relief. Relief? Since when do I feel relieved about being in the rawness of life. And yet, the intensity was frightening.
As the days drew on, I patiently awaited the impending sorrow I was accustomed to. But it did not arrive. There was no mourning over adventure’s end. Not an inkling of desire to set my sights on the next one. Rather, the solitude was comfort, the routine a respite.
A pre-scheduled work trip to LA kept me up night after night with anxiety and…dread. Dread? Me? Pending trips with family and friends suddenly drew mixed emotions – wanting the time together but not the travel. Who am I?
I wanted to believe this was a blimp on the radar of my emotions. But three months have passed, and the longing has only grown fiercer.
Turns out, travel was the canary in the mine. A tiny flag of warning for the impending tsunami of uninvited transformation about to hit. I definitely didn’t see this coming.
To be continued…