And then it happened. I became lost.

 My senses that were normally so well tuned and comfortable with their surroundings decided to cease in their proper functioning and with that I became numb to everything.

My appetite, once ravenous and a keen student became non existent. Any form of food that entered into my mouth no longer danced with my taste buds. All food tasted bland as if I was forcing sand down my mouth. I barely finished a full meal for a week, snacking my way through the day. When I did eat, I struggled in the basic task of chewing and swallowing, thinking I would be sick at any moment. Food responded to my attempts at consumption with complete refusal. My body was changing day by day in a drastic manner. Without a healthy diet, I was quickly losing the muscle I had so carefully cultivated in the gym and could see my body shape deteriorate and lose its form. My skeleton began to peep out and the bones around my ribcage and shoulders became more prominent. I drank alcohol which aided to temporarily stimulate the senses and I napped at random points during the day to sleep away the reality of life that lay in front of my eyes.

 I was physically present, yet mentally I had become as absent as sunflowers in the winter to what was occurring around me. Geography, time and people began to lose meaning, beauty and awe. Every emotion and each solitary day became rashly intertwined into one poorly filmed movie clip that brought with it a sense of reiterating detachment. A detachment that derived from a scarcity of direction, a dearth of purpose and distinct lack of energy. I noticed an abundance of pessimistic negligence towards everything around me. I was no longer being cautiously guided by the four wise elements I had so readily placed my trust in. Like the mother gripping tightly on to their child’s hand as they embark on their first steps, it was the wind that had carefully held on to my hand when I had needed its support on my lengthy jaunt. It was the fluid water that came in many forms which had afforded me a form of meditative distraction and the rich soil that had felt so calmingly familiar to my bare feet. Now the earth, wind, fire and water who were once such familiar companions transformed into something alien. They bellowed at me in a fiercely brass language I was unfamiliar with. With that I felt like a nervous foreigner in unknown lands who was both unaccepted and ridiculed by his audience.

With the ability to hop on an aircraft, train or boat at any given time and step foot upon new lands by sun set, the world can sometimes feel miniscule; a child’s playground with signs meticulously placed in plain sight, helping us to keep on track and safe. In more desperate times, the world can feel biliously gargantuan. It’s dangerously vast seas and strikingly high mountains felt as if they lay menacingly between me and the rest of the worlds population.

I had become lost in the sheer incalculability of the world and subsequently became lost within myself. The brain began to play its old uninvited tricks, making the decision to pursue an encore that the audience of one had no interest in observing. My confidence once again seeped out of me like the fast escaping air that leaves the cocoon of rubber after a tyre’s untimely puncture.

 Sometimes on our quest to find ourselves we trip up and drift down a route we did not intend to embark on. We regress and are faced with invisible challenges far greater than we could have imagined. The boy had seen the world and taken his bat along for the ride but right now I had become a boy that desperately needed the love and candour that could only be prescribed by one place; Home.

I needed a home cooked meal.