The Lost Boy

Life and such things

I wrote this post while listening to Night Terror by Laura Marling, so for the sake of providing a soundtrack to my words, the video is below so you can perhaps get an idea of the kind of mood I was in.

I've lost track of how long I've been living away from England. It's about five years or so I think. This is the second time I've returned home in that time, but my visit has been dogged by an inescapable sadness. It's an odd feeling and one that I've tried to repress to some corner of my mind. Yet whenever I stop for a moment and look at the sky or watch my foot splashing in a puddle, it's there.

Perhaps it's just that I'm a year older and have still yet to figure out my place in the world. What it may come down to most is people; people I grew up with, people I went to university with, people I worked with, people I stayed out all night with, people I met in one of the corners of my world.

Coming back to England, it hit me how I've never been able to make the same kind of friends as I did in my home country. No matter where I go, be it Thailand, Indonesia, Timor-Leste or some other place, I've always felt this strange unease with people.

Admittedly I felt this same way in England towards people I didn't know, but for all the people I was uncomfortable with, there were more that I had some kind of connection with. And now those people are scattered around England, around the world, grown up and somehow less mystical in my eyes. We aren't children any more, so where does that leave us?

The five years I spent living in Sheffield were mostly carefree and exciting. When I was in Sheffield last week I got a sense of that feeling again and it was fulfilling.

There were fewer people that I wanted to see than last time and I didn't manage to meet with everyone I had planned to. Some people I didn't even tell I was coming back. I had this vision of just walking around and bumping into people from my past. It didn't really happen. It used to be that my circle of friends was rather condensed, all within walking distance, but time has caused people to drift, literally and figuratively.

Part of me wanted to stay in Sheffield. I think I'm a very different person in that place and with those people than elsewhere. Again, it's mostly because of the people, or at least my feelings towards the people.

After Sheffield I went to my hometown, Bath, where I caught up with old school friends. I felt a little more distant from them than the time we met last Christmas. For whatever reason, I was expecting something more, although I still can't figure out what. Again, it seems everyone has grown up and is getting on with things.

It's natural to compare yourself with the people you grew up with, to imagine yourself in their shoes and see how they might fit. For me, the type of person I am, I don't think I could have stayed and lived in England. I also don't believe that I will ever go back to live there.

People often ask me why I left, and all I can think is to ask them why they haven't. This drifting away of friends and growing up would still have happened if I'd stayed home, only it would have been all the more unhappy because I would have felt trapped.

The freedom of living somewhere as amazing as Southeast Asia is something I wouldn't trade for the world. It's the place where I feel most at home, even if it isn't really home.

I didn't really enjoy talking about Timor-Leste while I was in England. People only ever ask the same few questions and I never know what to say. People seem generally confused about Timor-Leste, just as I would be if I had a friend who lived in Honduras or somewhere similar. I tend to give up explaining what kind of place Timor-Letse is and just say something like "It's very hot". The conversation usually moves on swiftly.

But being away from Timor-Leste for a few weeks has been refreshing. I was becoming rather bored. Conversation seemed to be based entirely on various forms of statistics and I was finding it difficult living in my house.

Oddly enough, my housemates have decided to leave Timor-Leste, so when I do go back, I will have to find somewhere else to live, which is something I am not looking forward to. It would be like beginning all over again, when I could be beginning somewhere else entirely.

So that's my life in a nutshell set to Laura Marling. I'm still struggling to really figure people out, especially when the things they are passionate about seem so odd to me. Things like telephones and furniture are the most puzzling. I'm now somewhere in France visiting my mother and brother. There's no sadness here, just a lot of trees.