Return of the Native...

How I long for a hot shower to ease this throbbing headache and this lingering need to be somewhere familiar...when did India become this place that  doesn't feel like home anymore. There is a sharp need to be back in my routine which is comforting, mechanical and detached. Is it that I have just moved beyond the need to revisit the past and live in the present or is it that India brings back a "bag of memories" I would rather not revisit -- chauvinism, a false sense of progress and a fatalistic approach to life.
Maybe it is the lack of sleep - 18 hours in 7 days...or the realization that some things will never change : however much you move forward in your life (career, money, other parameters...) I have searched for approval from a few close people...approval that I never got...approval that I convinced myself I didn't need...and the resentment of not having the approval gets to me every time.
Sorry - I guess most people treat Facebook and Blogs as a way to discuss how wonderful and perfect their life's are, how wonderfully they have aged and how much their career has progressed and to be honest I was one of those people - I transformed myself through sheer will power from this weird plump little child to a woman I liked (most of the time). I was am a little hesitant to talk about fears and inadequacies but the truth is I am human and I like it this way -
I am strong, I am also weak ; I am a mother, but I am also a woman; I do get lost, but I try and find myself in time; the deep vortex of despair capture me sometimes (more in the past year)...but I am a Phoenix...I believe that out of the ashes of despair will rise a brand new person.
I wish I could call my visit this time to India a vacation, wear a happy face and do the normal things I do - meet people, eat the foods I love, just absorb the atmosphere...yet there is this lingering cloud on my head. Why you ask...I don't want to be a parrot so read it here ...what would you do if you were me?
For now the native has returned....there is a year to say good bye to and a year to welcome...
How apt is this saying -
We can travel a long way and do many things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences or things. it is born from letting go of what is unnecessary, and knowing ourselves...