I’ve already left home. I came out to visit my family out in Vacaville, California on August 9 and I won’t return home until April 17th. My past fades away and my future hurtles closer and closer to me in this sunny time. This week has been a strange limbo between leaving and arriving. I have left all my friends, my house, my dog, my dad, and I won’t see any of them until April 17th. But I am not quite yet estranged as I vacation with my mother, sister, aunt, Grami, and cousins. Pre-Departure Training starts at the Alliance Redwoods Conference Center in Occidental, California, about 2,500 miles away from where I live. I’ve already covered 2,450 of those miles but was frozen a mere 50 miles from my destination. This strange time-out-of-time between ending my old life and starting a new one has allowed me several opportunities.
First it has done a wonderful job of separating the generally synchronous feeling that come with leaving and arriving, with ending one stage and beginning another. When something that I love terminates I feel sad, and a sense of loss. Leaving reminds me of all the things I never did; the roads I never drove, the restaurants I never visited, the friends I never called up. I feel sorrow and remorse and loss. I am leaving so many people, places and things. For eight months I will never see my friends or family, and this knowledge wields a heavy pang of loss. However, as always these symptoms of being homesick fade with time. I am by no means so fool hearty to think that I am cured of homesickness. I know that I still suffer from its symptoms, slight though they are, and am prone to relapses, but for now in this limbo time I am mostly over it. Which leaves the feelings instilled by the upcoming adventure. My feelings looking forward boil down to a contest between anxiousness and excitement. I am happy to announce that excitement eclipsed anxiousness around noon on Tuesday and has been gaining ground ever since. I have been told time and time again by that I am about to meet awesome people who will become awesome friends and then we will go and do awesome things, which all in all sounds kind of awesome. Right now I am thoroughly enjoying the pure excitement of an upcoming adventure without anything to sully the feeling.
I noticed something interesting while I was ruminating on the different emotions evoke by this whole process. When I am feeling the pull of home and missing my ‘old life’ I look to the future and think “I will be gone for EIGHT MONTHS! I won’t be back until April 17th,” but when I am excited and giddy I look to the future and think “I am leaving TOMORROW! I will be meeting new people in 48 HOURS!” If I think of my bridge year as an eight-month gap in my life it is almost unbearable. Thinking of it as a really fun, formative eight-month gap in my life is not much better. I tried to think of it as a new life, but unfortunately that implies I am leaving an old life and is again not helpful. I have to think of it as a really fun thing I am going to do, just as coming back home for the summer will be a really fun thing to do and going off to Tufts will be a really fun thing to do. All I needed was a little bit of existential realization that whether I am in Brazil or at Tufts, with new friends or with old, I will still be loved and have a good time. With that in mind the thing to do is focus on the good times I will have and not those I will miss out on. Got to think positive to stay positive.
It’s the End of the World – REM: Because my high school life, my life as I know it, is ending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY
For the First Time in for Every – Frozen: I am setting out on a great adventure. It’s the first time I’ve never done something like this, the first time I have been away from home for so long. For the most part I am really excited but there is still this little kernel of apprehension (thank you Elsa), but mostly I’m feeling Anna.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOReid0vEwY
