My Double Life

I feel as if I've been living two separate lives over the past week. I've been writing about an adventure I went on in my youth, and it's totally taken over my thoughts, dreams and "presence."

I found myself going down the Rabbit Hole, as I researched and fact-checked my recollections. I obsessively watched YouTube videos of other people's trips in the same area. I couldn't stop watching, and followed clip after clip, revelling in it all. It felt like I was right back there, in the mountains, and even when I walked away from my computer and books, I felt that I was still 'there'.

At night I'd dream as if I were in the mountains of South Africa, after spending my daytime hours trying to record all the little details and nuances for people who'd never visited that part of the world. I'd recall the real tensions and fears that had been present, fuelling my dreamscape. My legs were active under the sheets every night, clumsily kicking and flicking, disturbing my husband, as I seemingly re-lived parts of the experience. And we all know that behavior, reflexes and voices in a dream manifest in a weird way in reality, never the same way that we're experiencing it in the dream. I couldn't explain why I was kicking him - that's not what it was about (I think he's glad that I've finished this piece).

Even whilst sitting by the lakeside in Maine, a totally different lifestyle and environment, my past and present seemed fused for a time.