“Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”-Pablo Neruda
Hello world!
This will be my last update until I get too antsy and need to start moving around again.
Over the past two months I have visited seven countries, used almost every form of transportation available, learned bits and pieces of a multitude of languages, created new friendships, fortified old ones, laughed, cried, made life plans and goals, changed life plans and goals, found some sense of perspective and something somewhat resembling balance. And now, I'm back. I have found that there is something so strange about those two words and the concept they represent. I haven't quite figured out what being "back" means yet, where my place is, or even where my place was. It's said that distance is the ultimate arbiter of perspective, and I with no doubt believe that. Over the nearly three years that I was gone I found myself replaying events that had happened in my past, from small, seemingly inconsequential conversations or comments to life altering decisions made (generally quite flippantly). I was able to see them through a new lens, a new set of eyes, with a greater focus on the the repercussions of events and my role in them. I think it is a very unique and special opportunity to become so removed from your former life and self that you are able to parse them out and replay scenes as you would from a movie, or recalling memories that seem to have come from the pages of a novel from which you identified pieces of yourself in the main protagonist, but certainly not from your own memory. When allowed this distance, this space, to truly think about actions and reactions I felt more responsible for my own behavior(s). I found myself occasionally impressed with the decisions I have made, mostly in my youth, how brazen I was at times, but more than that I discovered that I was reckless, with my heart and the hearts of others, with my words, taking pride in my sharp tongue, even when one was not called for. I have spent my life trying to become hardened, a strong person with an impenetrable armor, sarcasm always at the ready, as a kid it served me well. It allowed me to cope with the tremendous amount of people who would enter my life with the promises of family and forever only to leave again, with the disappointments that life hands everyone, with not having anything resembling stability or a support network, with the knowledge that I was different and couldn't let anyone see that, because no one would understand. It was easier than dealing with things, to hide my bleeding heart behind a snide comment and smirk.
Then, I left. Everything I had been hardening myself against melted into the background. I was no longer the same person with angry words of impending failure ringing in my ears. It was replaced with a melodic Spanish sing song chorus of greetings with overly accentuated vowels, with the sound of laughing kids, the clapping hands that created the most spectacularly round tortillas in existence. These things began to define me, to erode away the hard exterior. This language gave me a fresh start, the location a new identity, the job a new sense of purpose. When all of this newness combines with the old you become a different person, entirely. Laughter flows more freely, you are able to sit a bit easier with the things that once made you exorbitantly uncomfortable, you begin to find more compassion for the world, and realize that for the compassion to truly be complete you must also be included in it.
I am not entirely sure when the exact hour was that Neruda references. I think, for me it happened a multitude of times, but he was right, and I found myself caught in the nebula between happiness and bitterness. It is hard to be seen for what we are, when you can no longer makes excuses, but must simply accept facts and own up to the wrongs you have done.
That is what coming back is to me. I left one person, the person everyone I knew here knew, and have returned someone altogether. Now I find myself trying to reconcile the differences between these identities, trying to construct some mosaic of a person using the past, present, and future me. It's overwhelming, and sometimes I am overcome with the feeling that I should have moved elsewhere, created a new, fresh start, but then I see someone from before and have such an immense feeling of gratitude for their kindness, for their presence, that I can't help feel this is precisely where I should be.
So, please be gentle and kind with me in this transitional period. If we chat please ignore that I will say the wrong words, use the wrong language, pause for an extended period of time, mid sentence. I don't really know what the next steps look like, or where I go from here. All I know is that I am exceptionally happy to be here, among some of the kindest, most thoughtful humans around, people that I am so privileged to be able to call friends.
Thank you all for the support throughout my time abroad, for checking in on me, the care packages and letters, you're all so very lovely!
Now, let's grab a beer and catch up
Ciao
