It's unusual for me to do something like this - I usually require a few days of internal turmoil before addressing my frustration on the blog - but I'm really hoping seizing this sensation as it happens will do something to help stop it.
Nothing has been the same since I returned from Iceland.
When we were there, Greg and I spent our time joking that we'd be returning with superpowers after witnessing the Spring Equinox supermoon solar eclipse. The thing, is I didn't believe I'd actually feel a change.
Now before you eye-rollingly reach for that red cross in the top right corner - I know I don't have superpowers.
But, something is different.
A physically tangible and spiritually unsettling yearning.
The only way I can describe it, as usual, is through elaborate metaphor. It's as though for countless years I've been the sole resident and housekeeper of this grand sprawling mansion, knowing every dark corner and secret staircase, every room, doorway, courtyard and corridor like the back of my hand, every object inside in its rightful place. Then, one day out of apparent nowhere, I find a door I've always walked past but never taken notice of before, and placing my hand against that ancient wood, I've pushed it open to discover an entire wing of the house I never knew existed.
Suddenly my perception of this house I thought I knew is completely thrown, and as I walk through the barren wing I realise that all I'd spent years establishing and curating in the main house is as good as redundant with this pristine and secret wing laying open, entirely devoid of content. The blueprints of what I've always known is true now need to be entirely re-written, all the contents rearranged because suddenly there's suddenly this newer, bigger part I must factor in and try and work with.
Yes, that's it.
I feel a new hollowness in me.
This is not the emptiness of something pre-existing - I look around and I see every room is full of vast riches and intricacies. But it's as though the spontaneous trip to Iceland, the tattoo signifying a refusal to settle for anything less than an extraordinary life, the subsequent series of smaller-scale adventures we embarked on as soon as we returned - all of these components have combined to form the key to unlock a new level to me, a higher sense of purpose to which I'm startled and afraid and excited to find completely empty and ready to be filled.
I now sit in a silent house, cross-legged on my bed, camera and notebooks bursting with stories and adventures of the past couple of weeks, and like a yawn trapped inside my chest, my fingers begin to tap against my shins and I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to concentrate on what it is that I'm looking for, what it is that I need and what I need to do to fill this hollowness.
And it's then, with sweet self-sympathy and a sigh, I realise that for the rest of my life I will always feel at a crossroads, because there's never a time I'm not going to feel lost between two moments.
