Muji, this is not your first trip there in the last couple years... Each time you went back you came back with a better feeling and understanding of the "Now" that Uruguay holds. The changes in the public in response to PTSD in many and the acceptance and availability of resources. When you have come back the thoughts of making it a future home for retirement have become more evident in your feelings. This time the bumps that hit were not of the place of past but the changes of those that you were in school with. You still talked of the good you felt except for the cold and bronchial problems.
So do you really feel you are "Fleeing" or just coming back to work towards returning? Did it feel like home to you or just visiting the past? Could you see places that would be viable as a home or just landmarks?
I know this is an emotional and financial investment for each of the trips. But if in your mind you are planning to call it home...then are you feeling either flight or fright in the prospect?
Or is it just what we have been discussing as going to the quickest link to those feeling..out of habit, instead of the sadness of any other viable emotion label that is really more descriptive than just those 2 all encompassing but precice feeling. We feel what we are used to feeling of changes, fear is one that our neuro synaptic connections that was re-enforced so much that our brain takes a short cut there instead or sorting into better descriptive feelings.
Can " I will miss being here" fit or "I wish this time I could stay and not return, to get by without the boost of tenure in my retirement?" " I feel like I am leaving a place I would rather stay in and set up my home"

Or outside chance of " Up close and after all the fluff of the other trips,with the regular everyday experiences you had including the cold....maybe this is not my dream?"
You didn't run from here to go there, you took a third fact finding, social and exploratory trip, based on you posts leading up to it.

If it is only the plane flight that identifies the flight of it...
then dump all of this in the barf bag attached to the seat in front of you and safe travels mi Amigo... You are not fleeing anything, just finishing your vacation.

Hugs Muji.

Jewells

Should read "those 2 other all encompassing but practiced feelings"

I have trouble leaving places... Even the place I grew up which is kinda crummy and where I was so unhappy. I feel a complicated sadness when I leave LI. And when I leave other places with less charge, I still feel sad. Not to unpack that all here, but to say maybe your feelings are complex, too, and to unpack and sit with them, maybe identifying them (naming them) would settle the automatic reaction (fight or flight) that PTSD has wired.

Have a good flight my friend and a positive experience of farewell.

I concur. You are weaving new paths in the time streams of life events. You've left positive energy in your kindly wake. That is an awesome thing to do.

When I was a kid every time my grandparents came to visit their departure would make me cry. The same was true if we went to vist them I would cry upon leaving. In my adulthood for many years every time I went on vacation my return flight would evoke tear. It was more a safe place that I had every time my grandparents came or we left. As an adult I thought it was my going to miss the people I was visiting. Once I started to really explore my feelings I realized it was all about safety and never wanting to return home.
It has taken me all these years to set up some kind of home for myself because of what home has always meant to me. The longest I have ever lived anywhere is 7 years.
Muji it is important for you to figure out where home is to you. In so many way Uruguay holds your past. The people and the memories. Also the trauma. As you found out in so many ways you can't go back to the relationships you once had there cause no one is the same. Finding your present and following for heart as well as your dreams will be important. It my take some contemplation about what your dreams are now cause our dreams change over time and they change with every all new input. Also they change as we age and grow.
I know that my friends from childhood are not the same e en though I know many of them, we do not hangout because we have changed and many of them have different value systems than I do. They are still remembering why I left home and all the publicity that went with that. They are not comfortable talking to me about then or now. They don't k ow how to be in my life. For me I don't want to live where my trauma happen but that is me. I am sending support while you sort out what is for you.

I think you go back to Uruguay for healing and joy. There is a lot of healing that takes place when we are not exactly feeling our best. We learn a lot about ourselves in those solitary moments. And I think the concept of home is not just the physical place. If we are comfortable and content with ourselves, home is wherever we are in the moment. So I don't think it should be neither fifth or flight for you. Because Muji is Muji no matter where he is. That should be good enough.

How about going to a card store and write a "Goodbye Note" to your place of origin?

I'm so proud of you, Mujica. Not that you need my approval... But you're a great inspiration.

I can't improve on Jewells, but...

To hold something good in my heart about my childhood home, when I left I said good-bye to the only oak tree on our property, and to the creek I played in as a kid.... Then I listed all the good things about where I was going *to*, and it wasn't flight as in fleeing, it was just... Going. Motion. Does that make sense?

Gentle gentle hugs.

i believe each time you face it you get more and more healed from the negative and embrace it in a new way owning the place instead of the experiences taking you out, i am proud to know such a courageous warrior who can go back to the battle field and yet refuse to let the demons of the circumstances own you, GOD SPEED keep overcoming muj you did it and you embraced new light in your life the music the positive things you can see now btw what a poor excuse for a friend the guy with the cold?/ you can do better you have better friends on here we would not have stood you up leo me any of us would a been there for you buddy

Thanks, everybody. Given your ideas I've figured out how to say goodbye. My first glimpse of Uruguay was from a freighter ship's porthole when my parents moved us here as missionaries when I was 9. So I'm going to go down to the docks, where I first came in to Uruguay, and say goodbye there out loud.

As far as where home is to me, I get that. It's been an issue for me my whole life, was I Uruguayan or USA? It seems that I'm both. When I'm here I miss some things USA--I watch CCN news in English every day when I'm down here. When I'm there in the USA I miss some things Uruguayan, so I read the local Uruguayan newspaper online every morning. Long ago I figured out that I only experience a balance between the two identities in me on the flight to or from the USA & Uruguay when we fly over the equator. It lasts about a minute. Ha!

This week I decided I would like to retire here. Some of the reasons are just practical--my retirement dollar will go farther here due to tax free advantages regarding pensions. I ran into a guy my age from the USA in a restaurant yesterday and had a long talk. He's a retiree, too, and talking to him confirmed the practicality of it.

I might (and I say might) have to save the money I spend on trips here every July and put it toward the big retirement move. Life after moving here would be cheaper, but it is a long distance to move so it's expensive.

We'll see what happens, of course, but for some odd reason I can't explain, in my heart I want to die here and be buried here. I told that to my best friend in the USA last year when he came down with me. We've been friends since 1977 when we were college roommates. When we were down here together in 2014 and I told him that, he said if I go first he'd take care of my burial arrangements down here.

The psychological issue about leaving places relates, I think, to abandonment issues from my upbringing with abuse and neglect. My folks moved me through 13 schools from K-12, and Uruguayan school is the only school to which I got to return after leaving. So there was lots of leaving in my childhood, and I usually dealt with it by dissociating and going numb.

The reason I'm talking openly about leaving, then, is so I won't just dissociate and be numb, and it will have some meaning to leave--to return to my life in the USA. I really thank you for sharing in that with me and giving me your stories and thoughts for context. I'm off to the docks with my inner child now to say goodbye from that 9 year old Muji's point of view.

Enjoy your time at the docks saying goodbye. But you know it won't be goodbye forever, because you will be back. That is something that you can plan and look forward to while you are here back in the States. Safe Travels on your flight home.

Perhaps hand it over to God Muji and ask him for some help to leave Uruguay in a better way... Although from what you've been writing on here my friend... I think the miracle may have already happened... I hope you have a safe and comfortable flight home... Big hug...xo

Personally, I find both fight AND flight useful when it comes to the airline parts of the trip. Ya gots to fight your way through the airport and customs yaddahs on your way to the flight. . .

Ditto for the dissociation. Airline cabins are one of the places where numb is actually useful. Especially on those long intercontinental legs.

Hope you packed your own movie for the return flight.

You'll do fine, muji. Buen viaje.

Funny thing, the whole 18 days I've been here in Uruguay I hadn't met a single North American until today. After signing off here I was on my way to the docks like I said, but along the way I ran into the rare North American. Uruguay is so far from the USA that tourists here are usually from as far north as Brazil, not as far north as the USA.

This guy really needed translation help. In fact, it was the waiters in a restaurant by my hotel who came to me and asked to translate for them with him so they could serve him. Anyway, I did, and since it was my last evening here, he had a lot of questions about my stay. Summarizing my feelings I've been posting here was my answer to him. It turned out to be a really good exercise in closure as to how to leave here with having it be fight or flight, but done peacefully.

Thanks everybody. I came back to my hotel room and packed after that and was able to face leaving, handing it over to God, as SunCloud put it. I may cry tomorrow, but that's ok. I think I've got a start on the meaning of this visit for my baby soul's PTSD recovery from your conversations here with me, I'm deep grateful, mis amigos, sinceramente.

Thanks for the hugs you gave me today for the journey back! I've never been so encouraged for a trip, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I figured out one of the things that keeps me coming back. When I speak my Spanish I learned growing up here, I have a very, very naturally local accent. So people ask me why if I'm an American do I SOUND like I belong here. With my sad abusive family childhood history of abuse and neglect, my ego is very comforted by having total strangers everywhere I go tell me I SOUND like I belong.

Longing to belong is what that part's about. I know it sounds silly, but it's also why I like being a community college teacher in Appalachia. My parents were Appalachians who came to Uruguay as missionaries, so they spoke English with a hillbilly accent. Where I live now in Appalachia, I can speak English with a hillbilly accent, too.

So I guess it comes down to the fact that I speak redneck in 2 languages. Ha! Because Uruguay is a cow country, like Texas, so it's "gaucho" or South American cowboy accent is the Spanish equivalent of something like Texas redneck.

So I spend about $2,500 a year from a meager community college teacher's salary for that, just to have my ego stroked by having everybody--total strangers--meet me and tell me: hey, you look like a North American, but you SOUND like you belong here. And then I get to tell my quick version of my life story--to total strangers, mind you. For a little while, it really strokes my ego.

I know, silly and expensive, huh? That's not all of it, of course. There's the PTSD exposure therapy good that it does, too.

Oh, well. A $2,500 habit yearly isn't great--I could be saving that for retirement. But I don't drink smoke, date, or anything but cuss a bit, so it's my only vice. I used to smoke 2 packs a day, so I guess I used to burn that kind of money on something that could give me cancer, too. These trips waste money, but nobody gets a disease and nobody gets hurt.

It's nice to have that insight as a Ieave. As with all insights, I owe this one to reflection with you here as DS PTSD, so thanks again. Pretty soon I'll be back among you in the USA, SOUNDING like I belong at DS PTSD in the USA, too. I love belonging to DS PTSD every bit as much as I love SOUNDING like I belong to Uruguay. Bless you all.