Well friends, I have found myself sitting here at the end of a very long journey.
Today
is the very last day of this epic journey that began on the 1st of
January last year. I'm sitting in the transfers section of the Kuala
Lumpur airport and in a few hours I will board the plane that takes me
back home. It's big. This is a big thing for me. I've been dreaming of
home for so long now that a small part of me is worried that it really
is just a dream and somehow it might all be snatched away just before I
land. I don't know, it doesn't make a lot of sense, I think I just can't
believe I'm finally going home. But my mum is washing my puppy dog as I
type this so that he is fluffy and clean for me to see tomorrow
morning, so I'm feeling like there is a space for me. I do have a home
and it's been waiting for me and I'll be there again in less than 12
hours.
Now
that I'm here at the end, I can see that the Phuket time and the Whisky
Diaries was an absolutely necessary limbo, and that I might have been
totally overwhelmed and just overloaded if I had of gone straight from
China back to Brisbane. They were also just 14 lovely wonderful awesome
days. Yesterday we hired a scooter again and drove around the island for
almost the whole day - we even went cross-country through the dirt
tracks and amongst the rubber tree plantations to get to a hidden beach
that looked like a postcard. Crazy stuff. Breathtaking, crazy stuff. I
was sad to leave Sabai Corner because we'd actually become friends with
the two women that run it, and they were just so damn nice. I couldn't
be too sad when I was sipping that last coconut though, because I'm just
so ready to get home.
So
now is the time I really sit down and think about all of the things
I've done since January last year, all of the experiences and the things
I've learnt, who I am now compared to before. I'm going to re-read the
long letter I wrote to myself on my first flight out of Brisbane all
those months ago. I feel like it would be impossible to think about
these things too much, and that I should try and reflect now as much as I
can before I get home into the whirlwind of family and friends and
wonderful home life.
Now that I think about it, actually, this is the last entry for poise on arrows
as a travel blog. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with this
thing, but I think creating it and sticking to it was one of the best
decisions I made throughout my whole time travelling. Writing everyday
made me realise that I actually wanted to be the kind of person who
writes everyday, and poise gave me a forum at which I had to
really express my experiences and their significance. I don't know if I
would understand these past 13 months nearly as well as I do now if I
hadn't been blogging and writing the whole time. Putting aside an hour
(often more) every single day to manifest your feelings and memories
into writing - well, it's a powerful thing for an individual. I'm also
pretty sure I want to be a writer now. So that's great too. I feel
honoured to have so many people reading about my bumbling experiences
and looking at my embarrassing photos of pulling-a-face-like-a-camel.
I'm also really grateful that I could keep in touch with friends and
family back home so easily.
I
have a jam-packed February planned but it begins with a week of quality
quiet family time, so you won't see anything posted here for a while. I
suppose sometime around the 12th or 13th I will have decided what I'm going to do with poise and I'll let you all know then.
For now, though, this is Bri Lee signing off from the big adventure. It's all done and over. And thanks for coming with me.
