Someone told me that life in NZ is exactly how it used to be. Nothing has changed. But, I can't remember how life used to be. Someone else told me that a lot of people back home have changed as well. But maybe I will have changed so much also that I wouldn't notice. Will it be like meeting strangers again? Or will we greet each other like old friends should?
The first goodbye is always the hardest. Nowadays, nobody really cares much when the Australians come back for breaks, even though we were in tears when they left the first time. Doesn't that kind of mean that some part of us died the first time we left the country? As if we were truly saying goodbye to a part of ourselves. Well I suppose that is also true. Life would never be the same after that first departure, so I guess we were mourning the loss of that once everyday life. Though, many people said "this isn't goodbye, don't cry", as Lewis Carroll said -- "I cannot go back to yesterday; I was a different person then."
I know a lot of people have criticized me as being someone who is consistently inconsistent, someone who changes with the direction of the wind. Maybe it's because I haven't found the person I'm comfortable being yet. Or maybe I already have, but haven't found the courage to share it with the world. I don't really know myself. But these are supposed to be years of reform anyway, right? There must be something wrong with me if I'm not continuously learning. Though I guess that's not the real issue: people are mainly concerned with being discarded and left behind as I seek new things. But for me that's not the case. I never want to let go of anything, actually. Even things I thought I would find easy to get rid of, nowadays I still find myself thinking about every now and again. I'm human after all. perhaps not the robot everyone thought I was, including myself at times? It's somewhat consoling. I don't think I've thrown my past self away since I've come here. It's just been a different experience, meeting new people who have no knowledge of your past experiences. I've enjoyed having a clean slate. Rediscovering myself and whatnot. It made me realize that I have a lot of holes in my past actually that people were around to fill and I took for granted, especially my parents and their expectations. So I needed to grow things in those places and be braver to reinvent myself and try to really feel what was important to me, not what I thought was important because other people told me they were.
Am I finished with that, a perfect individual coming out of my first semester now? No, of course not. I still have so much to learn about both myself and the world. But I think slowly I am understanding, little by little. I don't think I will really finished, even after my four years here and walking out of these gates -- "Enter to Grow in Wisdom". Grow I shall, naturally: nobody's ever collided with the sky though.
I'm ready to go back and enjoy the summer. I'm excited, a bit apprehensive, dreading the long flight but all in all ready to go home. I will miss college and I will miss the family I met here, but right now I am also missing my friends and family back home. Actually I'm lucky that the world is so connected now that I can just jump on a plane and end up on the other side of the world just like that. It's kind of great. I want to go to the beach and eat at Bruce Lee Sushi and lie in my queen sized bed and roll around without sinking into the mattress, and I want to hug my life size teddy bear and smell freshly cut grass and eat homecooked meals.
July 14 2012 . One Tree Hill
3 comments:
Very jealous you get to spend winter in NZ :) Have a safe flight!
It's funny how much we expect to change, and yet when we're back - it all seems so familiar. Yet at the same time, it can feel almost as if we don't belong, as if we're coming back to somewhere we've long left.
But maybe we leave a self here which we can always return to. Maybe.
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