The other side of the hurdle

Today is a significant day for me. I've passed the halfway mark. As of today I have been gone from my home for 109 days, and although I don't have an exact return date, I plan to be back by Thanksgiving, which is 108 days from now. This fills me with a wave of so many different emotions even as I type the words. In some ways, 109 days have flown by. That is nearly a third of a year. And it seems like a blink and it was over. On some days at least. Other days drag by and I feel like I've lived at least 3 for every one. But that is definitely the exception. Laurie and I (the girl I live with here) keep finding ourselves in the same familiar conversation.
"I can't believe it. It's Sunday again, " one of us will muse.
"It's always Sunday in Thailand," is the response we invariably send back.
And it feels like it's true. Each week melts seamlessly into the next one with Sundays being one of the few noticeable markers between the quickly passing weeks.
In those ways I start to think, wow, I'm gonna blink and this whole thing is gonna be over. But in other ways, the thought of reliving this whole 109 days that I've been gone all over again before returning to the US seems painful and slow. That's another nearly third of a year still remaining. Surely I've been gone for way more than half my time here, I find myself thinking. How will I possibly have the energy to make it another 108 days?
Something about counting in days seems to keep things in an overwhelmingly long time period. However, when I think that in just 4 weeks I will head to meet a GI team in India, stay there for two weeks, and then return to Thailand for just 6 short weeks before the GI team that will return me to the US arrives for a two week Thailand/India trip, the time seems inexplicably short. Either way, I have a goal. And as Paul says, I press on towards that goal. But I do not want to let today fall from the foreground as I focus on the end.
I will try to remain fully in each day, living out the present as if it is my only concern, and only on those days I am truly longing for home will I break up my time remaining into months, weeks, and days (eventually maybe even into hours) to see the impending closeness of my return home...Home. That's almost funny to say now.