This is a holiday, so of course it’s knackering.

And it’s a holiday in my hometown, which I’ve been away from for two years running, so of course it is/was dislocating, especially at first. The first two days, I walked around and thought, it’s weird, it’s weird, I expected it to be weird and goddamit it’s weird. But it’s mellowed, that sensation, I’ve gotten used to it, and it’s been awesome, seeing people who I haven’t in so long, expecting great swathes of distance and finding little or none. More than one person has said to me, oh ella you haven’t changed, you’re exactly the same. It’s a little strange hearing that, because I live such a different life in London, because I pursue different values now (or perhaps never fully subscribed to the old ones), I do different things, and the general feel and philosophy of my life in London has been very much about self-determination. I’ve been fucking so happy over there, because the culture has allowed me the space to be whoever the fuck I want to be, and fuck, fuck do I love that, fuck am I grateful, for self-determination. For the cultural diversity, which invites my participation, and in which context I’ve become a lot more politically and philosophically aware, and a lot less impressed with consumerist/capitalist values. It’s difficult to hold on to stuff like that, when you live in a country as affluent as Singapore. Less than a week and already I can feel myself slipping back into an old and unquestioned mindset.

It’s surprising that I’m enjoying being back, because I didn’t expect it; because I haven’t kept in touch with anyone at all, and didn’t know how easy it would be to slip back into friendships; because the last time I came, I was insufficiently at ease with my emerging full adult self, to be able to socially handle the incongruency.

But you know what Kin yip said to me today, that made me a little happy inside, and reconciled a little bit of me to myself? He said, even though I’ve gone off and done something completely random to whatever I was doing before, he could see how the fundamental person I was hadn’t changed, with regard to work. And that was kind of nice, and that was kind of true, and it kind of helps make sense of a) why a humanities scholar might ever apparently decide to attempt to become an academic scientist, and b) how the person I was before I left for England makes perfect sense with my political and social views and values right now.

The one black splotch on all this: It’s a holiday back living with my parents, who are of course bickering and intruding, so of course I already feel a low level of suffocation coupled with the desire to get back. I.. genuinely have no clue as to how to function as an adult, in this setting. So this feeling, it makes me not want to get out of bed in the morning, it also makes me incapable of doing all the things I need to do. Which is kind of alarming, and kind of makes me wonder, how the hell am I going to snap back to it when I get back, and even before, when I have to complete the millions of errands that need seeing to before I leave? There is a competent and independent version of me that has ran an independent adult life for four years running, now. I paid bills, subscribed to magazines, balanced a budget, cooked, rented a flat. I can’t imagine doing those things right now. I can’t even make myself get out of bed in the morning to do the motherfucking laundry. The past few days have felt like the way you do, when you wake up in the morning and haven’t yet had a good kick of caffeine, and are still wandering around in semi-twillight state unable to concentrate properly enough to get anything good and done.