is this real life?

coming home was what i dreamed about for 6 weeks but turns out it has been a hard transition.  the first day back felt like i was living a dream.  i had one thought that kept running through my head and it was a quote from david after the dentist (yes the youtube video):  "uhh i feel funny.  is this real life?  i feel funny.  am i going to feel like this forever?"  i can't explain to you the feeling of arriving back in the washington dulles airport and walking by the same gate that we had just left from 6 weeks earlier.  it felt like what had happened to me was all just a dream.  we arrived back at the airport and everything seemed just how we had left it.  everything that we had just lived out for the past 6 weeks was so far removed from everything here that it felt like it must have been a dream.  it's hard to make the connection between here and there.  it's like two completely different lives and i don't know how to merge them.  standing back in the dulles airport i tried to grasp the fact that less than 48 hours ago i had been standing in the middle of bara, immersed in the story i was living there.  but already it felt so far away.  as i thought back on what had happened there it felt like i was watching a movie where i watched the characters play out the stories but i wasn't actually a part of them.  i felt like i was watching myself from the outside but it didn't feel like i had been personally involved in what had just happened.  i'm sure a psychologist could explain to me that it's some sort of coping mechanism or something, i don't know.  i just know that it is a crazy thing to feel.  it's crazy that one day i could be so wrapped up in the stories there: i was shedding tears over my patients, i was sweating in the un-airconditioned gym as i struggled to teach a patient to walk again, i was laughing with one of my patients as he made jokes about america.  and then the next day i can all of the sudden feel totally removed from those stories.  it's somewhat scary i think, how as human beings we can so easily remove ourselves from suffering and choose to disengage.  so my first few days back here have been a struggle.  the first day i was overwhelmed because i felt this burden to process everything i had just seen and it felt like way too much to handle.  derek told me that i just have to let the processing come in its own timing and not force it.  and that is definitely true.  but what i'm realizing is also true is that while i can't, and probably shouldn't, force the understanding and perspective to come as i process, i must force myself to engage in those thoughts.  the easy thing to do is to pretend it didn't happen, and that is actually easier to do than you would think.  but that would be such a waste.  the hardest thing for me to do right now is to quiet myself and let myself really think about what just happened.  to let myself think about the stories of my patients.  to let myself think about the disparity between there and here.  to let myself think about what it means for me and how my life here should change because of what i saw there.  it was hard to engage in those things there but i think there some of the emotion was masked because i was in survival mode.  i did what i had to do because i had no other choice, and i did the best that i could but i didn't always have the capacity to let myself experience the fullness of emotion that came with the situations.  but now i'm back here and when i think back on those things the emotion comes in its entirety and it's hard to make myself go to those places.  so i'm praying desperately that God does not let me run from it.  i'm praying for the strength to re-engage in what i just experienced and to figure out how to merge my life there with my life here.