When I first took this job I discovered R&R – a great little policy for expats posted in extreme working situations. The point of R&R is to provide some time and a  bit of money to help get the employee (in this instance, me) to Dubai or Thailand for a week or so.  Knowing me, you can well imagine my delight at a this perk because I LOVE to travel. But…I have to admit that I thought of it strictly as a perk for me, and as something other people would need. I was so wrong.

Last week stretched me thin. It wasn’t any one thing, but rather all the little things that just build up over time when you are in such a completely different environment.

I anticipated the big things – dressing differently – being chronically accompanied by a man – working long hours against a stupefying deadline – these, I anticipated. What I did not anticipate was the gradual drain. By the end of the week I felt much like what Stephen Spender must have felt when he penned the following:

What I Expected

What I expected was
Thunder, fighting,
Long struggles with men
And climbing.
After continual straining
I should grow strong:
Then the rocks would shake
And I should rest long.

What I had not foreseen
Was the gradual day
Weakening the will
Leaking the brightness away,
The lack of good to touch
The fading of body and soul
Like smoke before wind
Corrupt, unsubstantial.

The wearing of Time,
And the watching of cripples pass
With limbs shaped like questions
In their odd twist.
The pulverous grief
Melting the bones with pity.
The sick falling from earth
These, I could not foresee.

For I had expected always
Some brightness to hold in trust,
Some final innocence
To save from dust;
That, hanging solid,
Would dangle through all
Like the created poem
Or the dazzling crystal.

A weekend and a couple of dinners with an amazing friend have helped to ease the “fading of  body and soul”, but I am no longer quite so arrogant as to think that R&R’s are something only other people need.