I was checking my calendar to see if it was time to poke the photo lab about my Lebanon rolls when it occurred to me that I hadn’t even been back two weeks yet; why does it feel longer? Why does so much feel like existential jet lag right now?
Twice in the last week, I’ve weirded myself out with my emotional responses or non-responses to things that came up. Shying away from conflict when I don’t normally; having a meltdown in a way I don’t recognize as myself; both ends of the spectrum, but both feeling foreign.
There’s something about this time warp that’s connected. Like how I was asked to write something about my time away at work and forgot I’d done that until people came up to me to talk about it yesterday. It’s like my brain’s a little leaky in places.
But I’m paying attention. I’m noticing the pattern; I think I was like this last year too, throwing myself into outings and meetups in the weeks after Lebanon to plug the holes in my brain, before crashing and pulling away completely for months. I might be doing that again right now; I just hope I’m more conscious of that tendency today because I’d like to sustain these efforts. They’re an inherent good.