Well, being the rule-breaker that I am, I am going to do it anyway. It's about time, right? (Forgive me if this comes across a little Doogie Howser-esque. I am never sure how much personal feeling/life-lessoning to share via blog.)
I've been home for 2 MONTHS now. Yep. TWO MONTHS ... give or take a few days.
And tomorrow marks the ONE MONTH countdown until my flight back to Spain. I get butterflies thinking about it!
Coming home hasn't been all fun and games. Reverse culture shock is a very real evil. You fool yourself into believing that you'll always fit right back in to life where you left it, but that's never the case. Despite your friends telling you that nothing's changed, despite going back to the same job, hanging out with the same people, and going to the same places, it becomes very clear, very quickly, that while you were out living your life, everybody else was busy living theirs, too. And trying to get back into things can be somewhat difficult and disheartening.
I had days where it felt like my whole Toledan life was a dream. Did I really used to just go for hour long walks for no reason? Did I really read that many books sitting in plazas and parks? Was I really that tan? Did I really go out for beers before lunch? Did I really have that much free time, that many good days, that kind of life?
Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be fully content. When I'm there, I think about how much I love home and all of my people here. But when I actually am here, I just feel like so much of my spirit is missing. Spanish makes my soul sing, and I'm much more content with the Spanish pace of life.
Something about being in a familiar place seems to squash my curious nature. I need to go new places, meet new people, and learn new things. I like to live my life with a certain spontaneity, a certain inquisitiveness, a certain amount of adventure. I go out hoping to learn more about the world, and in turn, I learn way more about myself.
While I learned a lot about myself during my year in Toledo, I have to admit that coming home is what really made me see it. I went through a mild identity crisis this spring, where I had a hard time reconciling the American me with the Spanish me. At my core, I'm the same person, but in so many ways, the two are so different. For a while there, I couldn't decide who I really was, or what really made me happy. And why did I have to choose?
But coming home has been telling. I know what parts of the American me I want to take back to Spain. And I know what parts of the Spanish me I wish I could live out in America. But for some reason, these qualities and differences are so hard to put into words.
I am really glad that I had the chance to come home this summer. It has been great seeing my family and friends. It was nice to catch up on the life that I missed here. It has been nice to drive, to eat, to speak lots of English (but let's be honest, I did that in Spain, too). Hopefully the next time I come home, I won't try to fit myself into the box of the life-that-was. My goal is to always be moving forward. And to come home and try to regress a year just doesn't make much sense.
Before I go, I'll leave you with this. I read this quote recently that sums up my feelings so well. It's from the book A Year in the World by Frances Mayes. It says:
The need to travel is a mysterious force. A desire to go runs through me equally with an intense desire to stay at home. An equal and opposite thermodynamic principle. When I travel, I think of home and what it means. At home, I'm dreaming of catching trains at night in the gray light of Old Europe, or pushing open shutters to see Florence awaken. The balance just slightly tips in the direction of the airport.
