If holidayphobia is the word that I thought I made it up then realised that it was a real thing, 'hiraeth' is the new word I just learnt and it really nailed what I have been feeling this time of the year, especially since Bee left.
"A spiritual longing for a home that maybe never was"...
There is no exact English word for 'hiraeth' yet it is surprising that not only Welsh people understand the meaning of this word. I guess the feeling of nostalgia, the grief for the lost place, the pain of not belonging to the current place seem to be universal.
Feeling as an outsider not new to me. I see it as both cursing and blessing. It sucks when you feel that you are not belonging to this planet, lonely in the crowd or exhausted to be a human being. But it is also a blessing when you can detach yourself from the reality, thinking you are just a visitor who is having a human experience on the planet Earth. It may be a delusion but somehow it helps to deal with intense feelings especially in the early days of grief.
I called this painting of Bee 'Hiraeth'. It doesn't have name and she painted it quite a long time ago when she was in love with Studio Ghibli anime. It was a scenery from that beautiful anime world which I am sure Bee had a hiraeth from. Sometimes hiraeth is a yearning for the place that we never know if it exists.
My hiraeth, however, is bigger and clearer now as I know it is my grief for Bee, for the person beyond this plane of existence, for the past that I never return to. "It is in the wind, and the rocks and the waves, it is nowhere and everywhere".
But I do believe that Bee no longer has hiraeth now, she is at HOME.
