hypermetropia

i returned. i returned to a completely different life. with completely different insights. to everything changes. i was dumbfounded and shell-shocked. i am dumbfounded and shell-shocked. i just don't quite know what to say. or do. how to react or act or properly re-enact all that i've witnessed. i can't properly piece it all together; all that's happened with all that's become. everything has been rearranged, and i know longer no where to put things. where to put myself. how to put myself down. how to intersect the big picture, when the big picture just keeps getting bigger.

i woke up thursday morning, at 4:30 in gumi, korea. i woke up to a long day. to the sun barely sining over gumisan. i woke up exhausted and hungover, ready to leave, but not ready to depart. standing in the bus terminal, wrought with emotion, i quietly said my goodbyes. and for the three hour bus ride to seoul, got lost in the green and rolling hills, the rice plantations, the bridges of south korea. i got so lost in the oh so many mountains of emotions and lessons and liaisons i could never do justice, could never fully articulate, nor recount.

twenty two hours lated we landed in portland; 9:10 on thursday morning. i made the trek home, narrow-eyed and bedraggled. i arrived home to a vet appointment for ladyflaps, a doctor's appointment for myself, a live-in boyfriend, and an urgent email from my boss looming over me. shrouds to a life i'd forgotten how to live. it all seemed so real it didn't seem real at all.

when my boss finally did lay me off (over the phone) i was numb. none of it seemed to really matter to me. none of it seemed real anymore. after seeing the things and people and lives and pain and elation and progress and recess and monument i'd seen, everything here just seemed so overbuilt. overdone and rehearsed. under-felt. saccharine in replace of repair. like everything existed for the sake of having something to do, to feel, to see. no rhyme, no reason; capitalism abound and around, surrounding us everywhere we look. the problems we all face, suddenly so minute; so laughable. i didn't know how to adjust. how to see devoid of the myopia i'd been hiding behind.

i don't know what to say or do, how to act or react, how to re-enter all this. the walls seem so fake. the people seem so cold and pristine. it's been over a week and i'm still absolutely shell-shocked. i still wake from dreams of cambodia. dreams of the places and faces i have seen. unsure how to reconcile all that persists. all that consists of mere moments, taking over me. make it impossible to see beyond hypermetropia. it makes me feel so alien. so foreign. like i'm speaking another language. i can't adjust to what's in right in front of me. so great, so nice, but so different. i'm having a hard time adjusting. dumbfounded and shell-shocked.