To make you feel my love

Sri Lanka is a beast. It is a gorgeous, reckless semi truck crashing into my chest everyday. Sometimes it hits so hard that I think I can't breathe, but I blame the exhaust fumes, suck air through my o-shaped mouth and focus on something else. To focus on what it actually is, this force that is forcing me to relent to this bone-crushing weapon of mass emotion would be too much, because it's too many things.

I get asked daily "do you miss home?" My answer is always the same "no." Because to allow myself to feel that would be taking up space where I could feel something else. Of course I miss home, I miss him and I know that intellectually. But I can't feel it. I can't feel anything. I won't.

I've seen the most incredible people doing the most amazing things. And we overuse that word. Seriously amazing things that probably don't seem amazing because you've not lived without it long enough to miss it. Building and laughing and touching hands and hair and creating choruses of laughter. They guide and create and they use themselves all up and then find more stuff to use up from somewhere else. A somewhere else I don't have anymore. "Do you cry when these people leave?" Of course the answer is the same- "no." I can't. I can't feel it. I won't.

When my plane touches down, when I am in the taxi on my way home...maybe then, maybe I'll let myself feel it then. When I'm surrounded by people who know me and love me...maybe then. But not now. Because once I start feeling I won't be able to stop and then there will be tears of happiness and of sorrow and for everyone who has left and for everyone who is coming and for everyone I will leave here. And I won't want to leave here.

I can't seem to think straight. The twine of the net around my chest strains and frays from the pressure and I'm dying for a release. Always just one second away, but I can't let that happen. I won't.  Because this isn't about me. It's bigger than that. Bigger than I ever could have known and maybe if I'd known I'd have been too scared to come. But I'm here and it's so beautiful. Even shutting it out is beautiful. This dull persistent aching is the sole reminder that I'm still human, I haven't lost the ability to feel, I've just put it on hold.

So please don't be offended that when we speak I cut it short, or that my smile is hesitant and all at once fixed to my face like a hook in the wall. Try not to think it odd that I stare at your jumper and not into your eyes. I'm just holding it together and making sure that everything is great and please know that everything is great, it's just a different kind of great than I'm used to.