myself and change | myself changing.

Though I know I will be welcome home with open arms, the feeling of returning is a bit foggy.

I have been here long enough to have distanced myself from what I left...not on purpose, but as a necessary means of survival. I have missed out on summer time there, and key changes that have taken place without asking my permission, both grand and not so. One of my roommates might have found a boy, my boss is gone, I quit my job and must find a new one, Mary is moving out after September, Tonia is traveling the country, and also quit her job. I won't have a home after October, I missed my brother's trip home, and time with my nephew that the rest of my family was able to experience. Haydyn is now talking up a storm, and email was not sufficient in keeping me up to date with the daily nuances of the people there I love.

I have changed since being here. There are more things I know, more that I don't know, opinions that have been altered, and beliefs that have been adjusted. I would like to think I am a little stronger, but perhaps that's wishful. I have gotten used to talking less, which is not a bad thing, just a true thing. I have adjusted to my life here, and this place has become comfortable for me. There are things that I shuddered at the thought of doing when I arrived, and can now do with ease and confidence. I enjoy my time alone, reading and writing, and just being. I enjoy the people I have been able to connect with, and will miss those I am leaving behind.

Missing, however, is a reality of life, no matter the side of the continent I am on.

These are all just characteristics of the jumbled feeling going on inside of me. During the flight home, I will arrive in multiple states of which I have no interest in being. They will be true places of limbo, a real version of me being dangled between two worlds I have come to love, one of which I am going to, and one I am leaving behind. The very act of me having left the one means it will never be what it was to me. The porch is still there, it is still good. But it isn't the same. And the act of leaving the other, something I will do in a little over a week, is a door truly closing, a time for this summer season to end, in a very real way.

Something I have come to realize, something of importance, is myself. I am the constant in the midst of limbo. And with that, I shall always have something familiar. This is why fear is so very dangerous, because a self engulfed in fear and doubt is not recognizable. If I wish to survive transition and change, difficulty and plight, I must be able to recognize myself, regardless of where I am.

The constant other than myself is change, and how grateful for that I am. For seasons change, regardless of my choices, and the season that will soonest greet me is Autumn. Sigh.

I shall type it at the bottom, taking you back to the top:

"It was a fine autumn day, really, and the air through the open windows smelled like life."
Jesse Ball