Losing your identity on holiday

I’m struggling in search of a reason to type something for my rusty blog rather than to sleep.

I don’t know if it’s because of the jet-lag or the long walk I had today with a friend around the Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver, but I just feel super-sleepy and my eyes are protesting against the idea to remain open to put together word after word.

Even to get up from bed to have my dinner has turned out to be a challenge today.

I look with terror at the fact tomorrow I will start again working.

Yep, that’s what they call end of the holidays.

I must say the twenty days break I got was really welcomed, as I really needed to get rid of some stress.

My holidays in Italy were a little troubled though. As soon as I arrived I was assaulted by muggy and extra hot weather, and in few days a 35C temperature was successful in ruining my attempts to sleep at night.

To go for a walk outside during the day was something impossible: I felt like getting into an oven, or as somebody had turned on a giant hairdryer.

Since the very first day I was a target for mosquitos, that obviously missed me very much while I was away.

But it was to meet my family after such a long time that really upset me.

I was somehow curious to see their and my reaction. When I was in Ireland I was used to get back home for holidays maybe 3-4 times a year, so obviously it was something totally new to me to be far away from my family for way over one year. When I met them at the airport I had an awful feeling: they were like strangers to me, people I was not really close to. It was horrible and I kind of felt guilty, as they are the most important people in my life.

That horrible feeling lasted only one day, but long enough to start seriously wondering what I want to do, if it is really worth to live on the other side of the world.

The sense of estrangement affected also my perception of the places.

The center of my hometown is going under massive renovation works that have turned it so far into something at a time uglier and unfamiliar to me.

But it was at the time of visiting some former colleagues that the bewilderment was complete.

I went to a close city asking for references at the journal I was used to work for 9 years ago or so as a journalist, only to find out that they moved the office somewhere else. When I got into the new office it was even worse: I knew absolutely nobody. The photographer, my former boss, all the people I was working with had left the journal or had been moved to other offices.

It was like to lose a piece of identity. How much is important a place that used to be part of your history, in order to give sense to your life and what you are, providing you with something stable? What happens when you can’t recognize places and people that made up your everyday reality?

I suspect it just means you have lost the contact and the roots with your home place, and you are like a little boat with no anchorage floating in the ocean.

I lost my inner ID and I'm afraid there's no office that can reissue a new one for me.

My return flight was simply a nightmare: it was delayed twice and cancelled once, and I (and many other passengers) got stuck in London and spent the night in hotel that, having no available rooms, could just give us the floor, a mat and a sleeping bag. Thank you BA: if you don’t refund me I’ll take another flight with you the next century!

The immigration/custom officers at the airport mustn’t have been impressed by my misadventure, as they found the way to complicate my re-entry in Canada, messing up my clothes in my baggage, searching for unlikely stellar amount of illegal drugs, but spotting only pullovers for the winter and milk candies for my colleagues. Yes, I admit it: I am trying to put in danger national dental health!

They also tried once again to confuse me about the immigration process, giving me information I later found out to be probably wrong.

At this stage I’d probably need a shorter holiday to recover from my previous holidays.

Finally, the warmth must have followed me: shortly after my departure the temperature dropped in Italy and increased in Vancouver. The stunning view from the Lighthouse Park reminded me there’s at least a reason I haven’t given up yet my fight for Vancouver: its beauty.