I’m here.

But it still doesn’t feel like it. It doesn’t feel right or real.

But I’m here.

At Heathrow Terminal 2, waiting to board a plane back to Bangkok. Back to almost a decade ago, to that place I landed at the start of my journey, and the last time I actually wrote in this blog.

I remember those days preceeding the flight and everything that came after very well, almost like it was yesterday. When I was such a different person.

I was more sociable, hopeful, optimistic and Bright-eyed. More invested in adventure and moving on from the darkness of the past and on to a brighter future.

Somewhere sunny, like Thailand.

And here I’m sat, 10 years later, feeling like a completely different person; not quite knowing what I’m doing here, or why I’m flying out. Clinging  to the safety and familiarity of the mental prison and poisons I have become so intoxicated with.

But one thing I remember feeling, thinking and writing in my blog way back then:

“I’m fucking terrified.”

Looks like I’m not so different after all.

Drag me off the hot coals I stand on so I can seethe about some injustice that I won’t step away from. Pull me off the sticky traps that I spend all my time and energy trying to get free from (but not too much time and energy or I might actually succeed).

Strip me bare of the my issues I don’t want but keep, of the resentment that was never mine to hold but I carry anyway, and the pointless ambitions and aspirations I try to drive deep into my soul and exorcise what I really want.

And I’ll be fucking terrified.

Whether it’s 10 years ago when I had a family to miss, straightened hair to maintain, more money than I knew what to do with and no place to come back to…

Or 10 years later when I have nobody but phantoms to blame, curly hair to fight with, no money nor any idea on how to make it, and no desire to leave the place I was, now I’m in the airport.

I’ll still be fucking terrified.

Take it all away and maybe I’m still the same person I was.

When I think about that, the fear feels like a friend. Welcoming me back.

When I booked this trip 2 months ago, I could only feel excited about… Well, everything!

Getting away from the confines of my small studio, the endless to do list full of miserable distraction, the endless parade of videos full of miserable distraction, or the miserable distractions of maintain my misery by giving up all the distractions.

I was excited about staying in a nice place, to walk around the streets and get lost, to happen across street food vendors and walk into 7/11 again to bring back toasties and other treasures back to my new home.

I got excited over the thought of pampering myself with spa days,