Reality

March 28, 2005 12:08 AM (Ottawa)
???????? (Shimodate)

I'm mildly horrified to realize that I can't mentally convert Ottawa time to Shimodate time anymore. It feels significant, while holding absolutely no significance whatsoever.

I've been home for over a month now. If you offered me a flight back to Japan leaving in 1 hour, I would be on it. Just give me time to get to the airport.

My homecoming has been surreal. I've seen a lot of old friends, been out to a club, moved in with my friend Meena, seen my sister (who announced her pregnancy), got a job back at my old company, and so many other things I don't even know where to begin.

I just posted several entries from my paper journal here, the last entries written in it. I started that journal February 25, 2004, and it feels appropriate to leave it as a chronicle of my time in Japan. It doesn't need to be muddled with the confusion of thoughts and feelings I'm experiencing now.

It was a bit painful posting the entries, it felt like making them public somehow made them more real. I can't believe I left Shimodate a month ago. It doesn't seem nearly that long. It feels like I've been away for a few days, a week or so maybe. Inexplicably it also feels like another lifetime.

I am back with my old friends now, I am working the dayshift at Convergys, taking phone calls like I did many years ago. I don't know if this makes things easier or harder on me.

Convergys welcomed me back like their long lost son. Smiles, slaps on the back, swapping stories, and talking about how long it will be until I'm promoted again. People ask me if I'm going to take back the Overnight Shift. I suppose I would if the current TL moved on to another position, I'm really not setting my sights on it though.

I like to think my sights are firmly set on a return to Japan. I hope I'm right.

It's so easy to slip back into my old role though, and that worries me. I loved the things that happened to me in Japan, and the person I became. I learned a lot about who I am, and what I want out of life. Unfortunately I am now back in Canada, doing a job I always enjoyed, surrounded by people I have a lot in common with. It doesn't sound so bad, but it is. It feels like the return to my old life is destined to return me to my old self.

My old self. That git would never have done the things I have, he wanted to, but he never had the confidence. In Japan I became so much more the person I want to be. Will it slip away from me because I'm once again living the life I used to? I know I always said Japan wasn't the real world, but I'd hoped that I could at least bring myself back from that fantasy. I don't want to discover that even I wasn't real there. If I can't have Jen, I should at least get to keep myself. We were real...