Base Camp and Back Again

I’ve gone and am back from Nepal. From Mt. Everest Base Camp. From three weeks in a developing country, from the most intimate and vulnerable time with my father and brother I’ve ever shared. From learning how to shut down emotionally, to not think about my kids or husband.

I’ve gone and am back and I don’t know what to say.

I wandered through the Himalayas and silently stepped into Buddhist Monasteries and woke up one day and climbed up hundreds of metres of crumbling rocks to watch the sun rise over Mt. Everest and I breathed Nepalese dust and food and dirty water into my body and lungs and I think that maybe I expected the world to gasp audibly when I came home and ask me Wasn’t it amazing?! and I would smile and nod sagely and tell them that it was more amazing than words could explain.

But three days before we came home, I got very, very sick and by the time I arrived, I was drained and on the verge of tears and rushed to my children and crouched on the floor of the airport sobbed with them in my arms. I came home and crawled into a ball and cried in Steve’s arms and slept and slept and slept.

When I was gone, the world didn’t stop. Women had children and my kids had a cough and Steve took part in the monotonous cycle of laundry and although I was temporarily deleted, I have been re-inserted into the cycle of lunch boxes and mis-matched socks and furry dogs. And in a way, it was almost like a dream.