Sometimes, a vacation is much needed.
Sometimes, a vacation doesn't necessarily mean staying on your back and relaxing all day long, but rather a simple change of scenery.
This was the case with the current vacation.
Over the past few months I've been dealing with near-impossible deadlines, and beat them all. I also had a lot of stress that isn't related to work, and the accumulative effect of all of this just knocked me down. I had serious troubles getting up, I wasn't sleeping well, I wasn't really awake, and I felt like my mind has become a black hole for memories - I couldn't remember talks I had with my friends or with my husband only days earlier, I had no idea what I did the day before yesterday, and in general, I was in a pretty icky place.
I'm not saying that this was a vacation - no, it actually really wasn't. I came to the motherland to fulfill some granddaughterly duties, and basically to make my 90 years old grandmother happy on her birthday. I brought my daughter with me not because I thought it would be easy, but because I knew it would make everyone in my family happy (which it did, very much). I knew the only person who would have to deal with the consequences of those decisions would be me. And so it was. However, except for one messy family fight, everything went almost perfectly, and much better than I expected. I even got to catch up with an old friend whom I haven't seen in years and years, and missed her very much. And my daughter made many new friends, and behaved surprisingly well (although we do still have a long evening flight tomorrow, which is the last barrier before getting home safely and go back to sleeping in my bed, by my husband, with my cats pushing and shoving me all night long).
Despite the fact that we don't keep close touch, I love my extended family. They're nice when they try a little. And also, people change. I had a very good time on our family meal today. I discovered that sometimes distance changes your perspectives, and that sometimes people just change before you when you only see them once every so and so months. Maybe I'm changing, too. I know I'm working on it, but to me I still just feel like... me. So who knows.
Funnily enough, sometimes the best thing about a vacation is that in the end, you get to go back home. You get to go back to the safety and the beauty of the life you call your own. And some of the baggage you left with (the emotional one, that is) stays wherever it is you went to, and doesn't come back to burden you in your life post-vacation. I hope this will be the case, and that tomorrow, when I'll be heading back to France, I'll be leaving some of my stress and burdens behind. I hope that the weather is going to get better, both externally and internally.
No photo this time, sorry. I really didn't even think about it... I'll try to remember to take one of the view from my window tomorrow, it's really beautiful, and one of the only things I really miss in my parents' home.
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