Leaving the threshold

It's 2:20am GMT and I just finished packing. In ten hours I'll be on a plane winging its way towards Minneapolis. The fact that I'm exhausted right now is probably something of a blessing: as it is, I don't have the energy to actually absorb the fact that I'm coming home, leaving home. If I did, I'd probably be in tears.

It's been an incredible and full week. Full of friends and dashing about and quiet moments of sudden realisation. Monday I went to LISPA to see the presentations of the current students, and it threw my world upside down in a completely unexpected way. Watching this new batch of people (one of whom is Dad!) finding their way within that community, that home, made me realise for the first time that I'm not a part of it anymore. I mean, I'll always be a part of the LISPA community, but that experience of really being in it, of breathing and struggling with and rejoicing in it every day, is over. It was... how can I put this?

It was like standing in the threshold of a house you used to live in, feeling the warmth from the fire on your face and hearing the laughter from within. At your back is a cold wind and the wide open scary dark adventure of the world. And you know that though you're always welcome to visit that house that used to be yours, you'll never really be able to step beyond the threshold, and that it's home to another family now. And that your next step is to turn, and walk away, and forge a path through the darkness.

The future is such a mystery. And it astounds and terrifies me. I have a ticket back to London on 10th Jan and a role in a show, but not all the performance dates are set yet and after I arrive I have no other ticket, no other plan or knowledge of what the coming months will bring. In a way, I expect a lot from these seven weeks in Minneapolis - I expect that I'll get a lot of new information about what it's like to be back, what it's like to be in the States in general, what's possible t/here. And I expect that all this new information will help me make some decisions about where my place in the world is in this moment, about where it needs to be, even if only for the next six months.