I sent a short, but straight to the point, email to my boss and all the admin staff at my employers and started telling everyone that I was leaving. I told fellow teachers and my students that I’ll be gone in under five weeks. I told them all that my days in Saudi are literally numbered.

Thirty one of them to be precise.

I’m going to be on a jet plane landing in London before I know it. I’m going to walk off that plane at Heathrow and walk in to the terminal like a man who has finally seen freedom after years of incarceration. I had a huge smile on my face today. A real one. An honest one.

Later, I was coming home from work and I suddenly felt melancholy. Everything felt bitter-sweet. I realised that this part of my life is over and that I have a plan about what to do when I go back home but it hasn’t really all sunk in yet. Maybe I’m not totally ready to end this chapter of my life. I know there are so many parts of it that will seep in to the next phase of my life. It’s inevitable. I’ve been changed irrevocably. I’ve been changed forever and everyone has noticed it.

I imagined today for so many months now. I imagined what it would be like to give in my notice and it kind of lived up to that but there was a hollowness to it too. There is with everything nowadays. I feel like I want to share it all but I can’t and that just makes it ——-.