This is it.
I fly to Washington in a matter of hours, and I can't say as I'm happy about it. This city and I get on well together. I am sad that I will no longer be intimately acquainted with it.
It is difficult to put into words the way I feel right now; unable to sleep knowing that my departure is imminent, and wishing it were not so. It is an odd sort of limbo. I know that today will be one of the longest and busiest days of my life, but at this moment there is literally nothing to do. I am packed. My apartment is clean, at least the bits I am responsible for. Everything is in order.
I've loved this city and the people in it, and I've loved living here. I need to go home for a few reasons, but I would move back here in a heartbeat after a week or two at home. I've had more fun here in the past few months than I can ever remember having before in my life. Part of it is the great experiences that I've encountered, but mostly it is that I am completely responsible for myself. If I make a bad decision, the consequences fall squarely on my shoulders and there is no one else to help support the weight. It is a frightening though, but also incredibly invigorating. For the first time in my life, I am an adult.
I am scared that this mindset will dissipate after I am home for a few weeks. I've been very strong and very smart here, because I have had to be. Will I continue to be that way when the stakes are not so high?
Another component to this feeling is the knowledge that Sarah will be here without me next term. We shared everything these past few months, and had a great time doing it. She will make new friends that will take my place in that scenario. But what about me? I don't have any friends like her at home, and there is no reason that I should all of a sudden find one upon returning to a place I have already lived.
This is compounded by the fact that she may no be returning to the states for any kind of permanency at any time in the foreseeable future. She is applying to art school in Dublin, and if she gets in she will remain here for the next few years at least.
It's not as though there are not good things about going home. There are people that I do miss, and exciting things on the agenda for next semester. But I have the treasured and simultaneously saddening knowledge that this has been the definition of a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The particular breed of happiness and invigoration that I have known for the past few months I will not know again.
Why is it, exactly, that all good things must end? Why is it not possible to take the best and most exciting parts of my life and incorporate them into this experience so that I might stay in this ridiculous bubble forever?
2 comments:
The road of life is yours to travel. Except for the detours that occur from time to time that are out of your control, you charter your course! Being strong & smart is who you are. Don't fool yourself - the stakes are high, perhaps higher than what you have experienced. You are an adult - it's all up to you now. This experience you cannot duplicate, nor should you want to. It would only detract. Better to create new experiences - who knows where time & desire will take you. For now - it's home, but we all know you are not yet done!
God Speed Lisy!
I love you.
Mom
Hi Melissa,
I am your Aunt Linda’s “partner”, and we met two years ago at Judy’s Christmas party but didn’t chat. I have been following your blog from Dublin and am greatly impressed by your quest: your choice of University and the courses you are taking. I am a little saddened by you last entry. You may already know what I am about to say here, but I cannot lose anything by repeating it!
Your experience in Dublin (and France) may no t be the end of something---“a once in a lifetime experience”—but the beginning of something big and life-lasting. AU (I once took a course there) is an excellent place for you to make the acquaintance of a great variety of folks, young (fellow students) and older (your professors) with interesting contacts around the world to lead you to places unimaginable. With your interests in anthropology and especially in Arabic, you are already developing the background for possible careers such as in the Foreign Service, as a foreign correspondent, , maybe with such organizations as Amnesty International and such. If academically oriented, fieldwork in such fields as anthropology, or even archeology; or if you’re interested in the spooky stuff, I am sure you could find interesting work with such outfits as the CIA FBI, NSA….all of which would be fascinating places to work and need your background NOW.
To my way of thinking any of them could be an exciting way to live a full life. My daughter took anthropology and gender studies at Amherst College, but her life took a different turn to public interest law. In one of my future lives I shall be an anthropologist. (Others: theoretical physics and political/cultural cartoonist.)
Anyway, congratulations on your work, and best wishes for an exciting life!
Cheers,
Clergue
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