backtracking on the past

This time last year I was feeling as though my destiny was to be encountered after years of dreaming. I was to be going to Afghanistan with AVI (Australian Volunteers International) to assist with curriculum development. I had put my house on the market and given notice to leave my job. I had even had to confront my Mum for the first time ever. She had lost one son four years previous and she said "oh well, I'll just have to book myself into a retirement home". I erupted at this. "Alright then, I'll stay and I'll die a miserable unfulfilled old man if that's what you want." So here I am back in Grafton on leave from PNG for a week. But it has bad associations too because after the Afg project was aborted, with my house' having been sold, being without a job and having forsaken my priestly vocation I dropped into seemingly bottomless despair and the worst bout of depression. I would wake at 3am with nothing to look forward to the next day. Like Wilbur the pig in Charlotte's Web. I remember our dog Andy out at Garah when he was terrified at having been growled at by a big dog ran onto the road and into the wheels of a ute. I thought he was going to die but he recovered. Thereafter when Matt and I walked past that spot, Andy always crossed over the road fifty metres before, walked along the railway line and rejoined us up ahead. He had bad associations with that spot just as I am having bad associations and am anxious to get back to PNG where hopefully we can rewrite a meaningful job description.