Seperation Anxiety or Re-entry Anxiety: The Exciting World of Competing Psychoses

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The craziest thing is that, as I get ready to go home, the time you would think would be the most exciting and least stressful, I seem to have stress coming out the wazoo. At the beginning of November, as the countdown really started, I felt great. The knowledge that I would be back in Canada in a ridiculously short amount of time was making me feel almost euphoric. All of the lonliness and all of the struggles with culture shock seemed to disappear and I felt 100% content and happy. None of the things that bug me about Filipino culture, about Baguio City, about my life, seemed to exist anymore. I guess that was the weightless feeling you get before a big fall. That lasted for a wonderous couple of weeks, and then, without warning the anxiety hit.

And suddenly I felt like I was in third year university again. Like I had exams to study for and research to finish and christmas shopping to do, and a work schedule, and a boyfriend all being juggled above my head. You know that feeling, when even having a day planner and writing everything down can't make you feel organized enough to slow your breathing or your heartbeat. I hadn't been expecting to feel that way, esecially not in this landscape.

Work schedules, all schedules really, are calmer here. You are allowed to exist on Philippine time and chat in between projects and take out a half and hour mid-day to sit down for a snack. Though the stress connected to this job is emotional, and though the schedules are 24 hours, 7 days a week if need be, the typical day is less hectic, less anxious then in my North American life. But by mid-November I was lying down to go to sleep at night with my brain running on full speed. Plans were being strug together in record time, but seemed almost within minutes to be slipping through my fingers. Nothing seemed capableof disipating the stress. I blamed the work at first, the continuing Surface James Balao Campaign, and the preparations for December 10's International Human Rights Day Celebrations. At least I did, until the dreams started.

I am a dead log sleeper. This is typically because I work or play myself into exhaustion during the day. But by the end of November I had become almost completly unable to sleep. I stared up into my myskito net, and doozed, and dreamed hetic, disconnected dreams featuring people from here and people from home and scenarios that would leave your head reeling. I was waking up in the mornings with bed sheet creases all over by body, an indication of hom many times I was rolling over and over in the middle of the night. It was when Canadian friends and Filipino coworkers started showing up in the same dreams that I finally understood where all of the anxiety was coming from.

I have had numerous foreigners, and some Filipinos, tell me in the last few weeks that they are impressed by how well I have intergrated during my internship. The compliment seems silly to me, since I wasn't trying to integrate so much as I was trying to live a normal life. But it never occured to me while I was developing this normal life, making friends, choosing a favorit restaurant, a favorit bookstore, that I would have to leave. And that leaving would really be sooner then later. So I am now being faced with the realization that I have to leave this life that I have built, and leave it for an undetermined about of time. So my schedule is pact, with loose ends at work, but also with people, so many people. People I wasn't thinking about having to say good bye to when I got close to them. The attempt to say goodbye to everyone, and to do it in the most meaningful way, running around like a chicken with her head cut off.

And maybe if I could just focus on my goodbyes, focus on enjoying my last few weeks here things would be calmer. But I am forced to think about home even as I am saying my goodbyes here. I was warned about this phenomenon in my training before I came, the reality that your mind goes home well before your body does. But I wasn't prepared for how emotional that reality would be. It is so hard to make plans for my new life in Canada while still living an entirely different life here. It makes me feel guilty, and at the same time it makes me feel like I am running out of time. There are so many things to think about, to consider, to prepare for: where will I live, what will I do, do I want to go back into politics, do I want to work for an NGO or go back to school, do I even want to stay in Canada once I am there... and then there are the personal concerns and anxieties.

It just all seemed to creep up on me. And now I feel like the questions of this life and the next need answering in a matter of weeks. I am torn by the realization that the lifestyle I have choosen, this life of a traveling human rights salesman, is always going to leave me with last months and weeks like this. I will always be trying to living a real life, and then always saying goodbyes. It seems like instead of living one life I will be living many little snippets of different lives. Is that good or bad? Well, at least it gives me various anxieties to choose from, instead of just having one at a time. I suppoes a peson likes to be able to pick the crazy they are in the mood for that day. I am scheudling now, scheduling everything, my social time, my laudry doing time, my rest time when I return home - trying to keep both my leaving the Philippines anxiety and my re-entry into Canada anxiety at bay. Mostly because the parameters of my social life right now requires much more sleep then the anxious dreams and sheets creases are allowing me.

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Comments

[maudie macfarlane]

well Nic there are not to many sleep night,s until we see you . take care . love gram