A guestpost by Zoe Tuckey

Back.
First a check list:
Jump off a moving train ✓
Travel for 13 hours from Goa to Bangalore when wedding is actually in Madya Pradesh
✓
Leave suit for said wedding by seat number 38 ✓
Run after train to retrieve suit ✓
Ask pre-paid taxi man – why are you laughing so hard, it’s not funny, just take us to M.P
for 500 rupees dammit ✓
Have absolutely no numbers to contact anyone. ✓

I said I wouldn’t tell any stories but let me just say it was an expensive and
madness-inducing lesson in Indian Geography and general communication skills.
It is so sweet to be back, even in this cold, even with the piles of laundry.

Holiday wasn’t so much inspiring as reflective. Good hard reflection. I’m not so good at
that stillness thing, that inner peace thing. I’m more like tangled wool on the inside, and
I’ve grown used to the way I work. I cope. I have held my proud healed self high for the
last few months, coming to India showing off my battle scars, condescendingly spouting
words of wisdom to my poor friends. Been there done that bought the t-shirt kind of
stuff . Well it turns out the t-shirt was just a facade. Goa made me realise that it is OK
not to be OK, not to try to be OK. Sometimes a person like me is just a person like me.

Goa made me realise that sometimes you pay money, a lot of it, just to burst out of your
beach shack and watch some Chinese lanterns floating across the sky, and all of the stuff
God made. That you can be waist high in water and not see a single thing man made. It’s
worth every rupee. Goa took it all from me. Not the pain or the past, just the stiff upper
lip. Wiped it right off my face. I gave it all to the pull and suck and crash of each wave.
The rhythm of healing. God’s natural therapy just washed right over me.

I didn’t come back new, I came back a truer version of me. And it feels so damn good not
to live inside a stranger any more . I can run my hand around the scars and I know really
well which parts need a whole lot more work and which parts I can really be proud of.
All that I have left to say is go to Goa some time.

But if you suffer with Trypophobia don’t go to the very end of Palolem beach, it’ll
seriously mess you up.

About the author-
Zoe Tuckey was raised in Mussoorie, a small town at the foothills of the Himalayas. She has lived in many worlds but for now lives in Delhi. She is a writer, a Doula and a musician and feels a deep need to fill white spaces with many words