Post Vacation Blues - The Afterdeath of travel memories.

 I'm writing this post mainly to soothe my soul from post-travel blues. I've never experiences post travel depression quite like I am not, and frankly I'm not sure what to make of it. I am no novice to travel. Statistically, the average American has visited less than three international countries in their lifetime. I have left the United States of America sixteen times. However, this return has me low. 

Maybe it's the deadlines at work that I'm facing, or the jet lag lingering, the pending life changes to come, or the lack of anything to look forward to. Is it true that as I get older, I cling onto my memories with my family that much more? 

I think returning from an amazing trip is a death. Let me explain why. You leave on a magical trip to a far-away destination immersing yourself in culture and food and companionship. Most of the things you experience are only experienced in that minute never to be shared again, and your memories of those experiences are only as long as your brain relishes them. The psychological emotions those experiences emit pass with each new event that happens in your life, causing your recent memories to fade. Of course we have those life-long memories we talk about. Remembering the train ride from Nagoya to Kyoto on the fastest train in the world, or walking up in the castle with your dad, eating takoyaki for the first time watching the fish flakes wave in the wind, but what about all the other memories? The step up into the bathroom with the bathroom shoes, the hard touch of the piano keys in the church, the window that opens in the shower stall to release moisture... I want to remember all of these memories and I know they are leaving me just as new ones are coming. There is also the death of life continuing on around me. The people I experienced my travel with understand, everyone else tries, or really just doesn't care. I can show my pictures or 1 million videos I took, and maybe this is why I'm obsessed with capturing all the moments. I Just. do. not. want. it. to fade. I want to look back and remember the black rough wooden exteriors of the buildings in Mino City and how the sun rays looked beaming right down the street. 

For the past few years, my life has run from one trip to the next. Last year I hopped from DC to Stone Mountain, to Atlanta, and Colorado, to Oregon, and Washington State, Las Vegas and Utah, and back to Virginia and Pennsylvania and DC. It was one memory to the next, and our minds and bodies need time to ponder and relish what we've experienced. But I'm rushing on, back to DC, and now Japan, and here and there. The flurry is too fast. I need it to slow. Like the shinkansen the scenery is becoming a blur, and my emotions are blurring with it. 

I spoke with a Japanese friend at work and expressed that I couldn't have taken this trip at a worse time. Work is crazy and deadlines are stressful, and she looked at me and laughed and said, "so what. Let them worry about that. Life is too short". In a way, that gave me permission to emotionally, take time mourning the death of my vacation.