Been back in NZ since Tuesday. That's the reason I haven't updated - I keep opening the post window and then finding I have nothing to say.

I'm feeling so much stuff at the moment and I feel like someone put my brain in a washing machine for a few hours, and now it's all dizzy and soggy and unsure of where's up. Being back here, where everything is so foreign but not quite foreign enough, is fucking with my head. Unless it's happened to you, you just can't understand how strange it is to drive down a road you'd forgotten existed and still know every twist and turn by heart. To walk into a room of people who think they know you because once they did. To ask someone, 'How do you think I've changed?' and get the reply, 'You're thinner.' It's like I've just stepped out of time for a while, as if all the stuff I did in Italy doesn't really matter anymore. And in a sense, it doesn't, not here. It doesn't matter to anyone here if I can speak a whole new language, if I've found whole new parts of me. They knew me as I was; if I became a different person in Italy, how would they know? They weren't there.

And then when I try and articulate these things - how I feel so out of place here, here where my place really should be, where it always has been, they feel insulted. Am I saying Italy is better than New Zealand? Am I saying my friends, my family there are more important than the ones here?

No, I'm not. I'm NOT. But I'm used to loving these people from afar. I'm used to seeing my sister every day and emailing my mother once a week. I'm used to MSNing one friend and getting drunk in the company of another. Now that the roles are reversed, I don't really know how to cope. My friends and family in Italy are the ones I developed in the absence of my friends and fam at home - now I have the old ones back, where do my Italians fit in? They're so strongly a part of me, it hurts me. Every time I see something and think, "Elvira would love that," or "Lauren would know what to say," there's a knife twisting a little inside. "Manuel had hair that colour," or "Jacquie would kill for those sunglasses," just makes it worse.

Every time I wake up from dreaming in Italian, or shout 'Cosa?' instead of 'What?' serves only to remind me of what I've lost. Because I've lost it. There's no going back to what I had, where I was. My family is still there, but my closest friends are sprawled out across the globe, and the place I spent so long making for myself is gone. And this makes it harder than when I was leaving NZ. When I left for Italy, I knew everyone would still be there on my return. Now, I know they won't be.

I suppose I'm grieving, grieving for my lost life. I should be happy to see everyone here again and to eat the food and go to the library, and I am, but I could do these things in Italy, anyway. But from here there's no way I can go to my favourite bar and drink spritz, or steal Cate's purple high heels or do any of the things I really feel like I ought to be doing. the fact remains that I don't want to be here. I want to be in Italy. I just - just don't want to be here.

And I can't say that - can barely *think* that - without feeling guilty. Seeing how happy my mum is now I'm here, how much time my brother willingly spends with me, makes me feel terrible thinking this. I don't want to insult them, hurt their feelings, make them think they don't measure up to the fam in Italy. They do. But I've been with them for sixteen years, and the Italians for one. Couldn't I be spared a little more time?

To my friends in RL who read this: please don't take this personally. It's not you, it's me. I have the problem. I need to let go of Italy, but I can't do it. I know I have to, but even the thought hurts me too much. Maybe in time, it'll improve, but for now on, yes, I would rather be there than here. But you don't really have that much to do with it.

I just have to get all this out somehow or I'll explode.