Moving on...and why

by SS

I wrote parts of this in my journal quite awhile back. Finally getting around to putting it on the blog. :)

Tonight I enjoyed a lovely farewell dinner with friends. For a few moments during our meal, I stepped outside of myself in nostalgia. It was as though the future me was looking back and remembering fondly this last night with dear friends before heading out for good. . . .That had been the end. So tangible. Beginnings and endings are rarely tangible. Something begins and you hardly notice it till you're in the midst of it. Something ends, but you don't notice until it's already gone. But in that very moment, I had felt the end as it was happening. I smiled at the memory before returning to the present.

My position overseas is not temporary nor would I ever intend or hope it to be. This is not my next "adventure." This is what I've wanted for almost as long as I can remember.

My parents moved us abroad when I was in my early teens. It was the most tragic thing that could ever happen to a teenager. What about my friends? They were my entire world. What about driving and dating and proms and graduation and all the other things that every American teenager is supposed to enjoy? Instead, my family was moving to some stupid country that I'd barely even heard of and whose language I did not speak. Not only that, but it was to a fairly small town with no American school. I was positively convinced that it was going to ruin my life. I had never cried as much as I did on that long series of flights to our new home.

And then we landed. I will never forget that feeling. That feeling of getting my young, immature, and overdramatic life rocked. I wanted to be so mad. Indeed, I did hold on to my anger for quite some time. Probably just to spite my parents like the angsty teenager I was. But honestly, it was love at first sight. And my life has never been the same since.

I realized I could I think more clearly in a foreign environment. I could feel more deeply.

My teenage emotions were all over the place, but I had never felt more alive in my entire life. I started to love the challenge of trying to insert myself into my new culture and language. As a silly young teenager, I daydreamed about falling in love with one of the locals and becoming that culture. I loved finding myself in a new language. I loved finding new words and phrases to express my emotions―new ways of feeling and thinking about things. I loved finding a new me. Well, maybe not entirely new. Just more aware. More alive.

I eventually moved back to the US for college, but tried to continue that life as much as I was able. I've now lived in multiple countries and am fairly comfortable in several languages. This is because when I go live or travel in a country for awhile, I don't just go to see the sights or “say I've been there.” I want to become the county and its people―or at least as much as is feasible given the amount of time I have there.

I am not one to view being "well-traveled" as a badge of honor. Bragging about stamps in my passport is not my style. I don't go out and try to rack up as many countries as I can. There are a few countries in particular that I find myself traveling to over and over again because I have, in a sense, become part of them. I don't care as much about jetting off to see someplace new. I care about jetting off to reconnect with a part of myself. And even when I do travel to a new country, I don't care about seeing all the main sites and getting my picture taken in front of them so I can bring back evidence. I would be content to spend days on end sitting in cafes, chatting it up with locals (however broken my version of their language may be), and people watching. Soaking in all the different ways there are to think, to feel, to live.

After all, what better way to really know what's inside yourself but to strip away all the externals that you're used to? Take away all your familiar surroundings, people, language, food, behaviors and what is left? Just you. How will you connect with another human being when words are difficult if not impossible to find? How will you live your day to day life when even the simplest tasks of procuring food or traveling from point A to point B become significantly more complicated?

Up till now this is a life I've only been able to embrace on somewhat temporary occasions―a mission, study abroads, vacations. Now it will be mine to live out forever. I know it won't be perfect. I know it will be very hard at times. I often think that by following this path I have traded in any chance I may have had of ever getting married. I guess we have more control over some dreams than others.

I don't know if I've made the right choice yet. I only know that I feel more alive.